recovering data from a crashed ext3 hard disk 4811

Walter Mautner

I know: my tape drives cost more than the average computer these days. But after a few months of operation, the data on there are worth more than the hardware anyway, especially if I consider my time to recover a crashed hard drive to be worth anything. And since I leave my machines up 24-7, I buttume by Murphy's Law that the problem would start just after I go on vacation for a week or two, and progressively get worse until I get back. By then, any recovery would be hopeless.

What I find so frustrating is this:

In the mid 1960s, I lost a file through stupidity. Since then I have always done backups to tape (since that was what there was: backups to punched cards or punched paper tape was never a practical proposition).

Every week or so on this newsgroup (and others), the question of recovering data from crashed disk drives or from someone running rm -fr * as root in the root directory or from an unamed operating system going beserk and scrozzling the disk(s) comes up. And most of the time, people are given instructions for how to try to do it. People who know the intimate structure of the file system in use can sometimes recover some of the data if the problem is caught instantly (i.e., before the lost files get into the free list and then re-allocated to something else -- difficult on a multiprogramming multiuser system such as UNIX or Linux). And almost every time, someone says to recover from backup because it is much easier and more effective, and yet people insist on not doing backups.

Just as I no longer have any sympathy for people who do not have their machines powered through a UPS, I no longer have any sympathy for people who do not have their files backed up.

It is true that a UPS costs more, initially, than no UPS; and that a backup device costs more, initially, than no backup device. But just as you would not drive a car with no liability insurance and you would not own a house with no fire insurance, so you should not run a computer with no power interruption insurance and no file loss insurance. The only difference seems to be that you are required to have liability insurance on your car by a government agency and you are required to have fire insurance by your mortgage holder. I do not suppose I would want it to be required by law to have a UPS attached to my computer and a backup device as well.

I cannot protect fools from their foolishness. When a friend got her first computer, she asked me what to get. I got her a good basic machine (in about 1997) with a Zip drive on it for backing up her personal stuff, and three 100 MByte Zip disks, and set it up to do weekly backups. She never did. At least three other friends had me configure computers for them and they refused any backup devices (I do not consider the floppy drive, formerly supplied with all personal computers, to be a backup device). So when their hard drives crash (about every 3 years), it is just too bad for them.

People seem to think that computer operating systems should crash, that files should get lost, that nothing can be done about power failures ... AND THEY JUST WILL NOT LISTEN when advised that there is nothing inherent in computers that requires them to endure that. You can lead a camel to water, but you cannot make it drink.

Buncha camels out there. 8-(

-- .~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642. V PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939. ^^-^^ 07:10:00 up 94 days, 1:07, 4 users, load average: 4.53, 4.21, 4.07