From owner-freebsd-fs Mon Apr 29 11: 1:21 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from smtp.comcast.net (smtp.comcast.net [24.153.64.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 139B537B41A for ; Mon, 29 Apr 2002 11:00:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from leto (pcp529856pcs.nash01.tn.comcast.net [68.52.131.181]) by mtaout45-01.icomcast.net (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.1 HotFix 0.3 (built Apr 8 2002)) with ESMTP id <0GVC006B0COXVM@mtaout45-01.icomcast.net> for freebsd-fs@freebsd.org; Mon, 29 Apr 2002 14:00:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 12:56:11 -0500 (CDT) From: "Brandon D. Valentine" Subject: Re: newfs overwrite... In-reply-to: <20020429121106.V97112-100000@lilly> X-X-Sender: bandix@leto.homeportal.2wire.net To: Joshua Steele Cc: Michael Sierchio , freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Message-id: <20020429124054.X1710-100000@leto.homeportal.2wire.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Sender: owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Mon, 29 Apr 2002, Joshua Steele wrote: >Well..this was the backup/storage server. I contacted drivesavers, and >its going to be about 7,000.00US to get it fixed by them...which is not an >option because i do not have that much in resources to get the drive fixed >(i am a small business) ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS backup critical data to tape. Sorry to be so harsh, but let this be a lesson to you. Recently my boss blew away a fair bit of PHP coding with an unintentionally greedy rm command. He would have felt awful except that 24 hours had elapsed since the file was last modified and so my backup schedule (courtesy of amanda) had already put the file onto a tape. It took a matter of minutes to restore it, literally. $7k is an expensive lesson in the relative unreliability of hard drives. For under $10k you can get a 19tape AIT-2 library from Overland Data w/ a full compliment of tapes. Amanda is free software. Protect your data. If you can't afford the hardware up front, there are online merchants who will help you finance it. The investment pays off the minute something like this happens. >Are there any other tools, etc. for freebsd that aide in rebuilding the fs >table? Or am i basically not going to be able to repair the drive, and >might as well move on and start salvaging what financial data i do have at >the current time before the tax quarter is up.... I recently used gpart (ports/sysutils/gpart) to recover the partition table on a botched WinXP system for a friend. I don't know if it can actually recover data from a newfs'd filesystem. The system I used it on had only had its partition table wiped. It's worth a try though. If that doesn't work you might start reading fs(5) and friends and see if you can't come up with something creative. The data is still there on disk but since you newfs'd it you'll be without the inode-to-file mapping that makes the data meaningful. My suggestion is, don't ever mount that drive rw, only mount it read-only so you don't overwrite what's hiding on the disk. The data is at least in some form recoverable, it's just a matter of how much time and effort you need to put into it. At a certain number of hours of work that $7k starts to sound like a bargain. Good luck! Brandon D. Valentine -- "Time to resign from the human race, wipe those tears from your lovely face. Baby, wave to the man in the ol' red caboose before all hell breaks loose." - Kinky Friedman To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-fs" in the body of the message