Re: Lost Files

[Christian Mayrhuber <christian.mayrhuber@gmx.net>]

Alexander Waller wrote:
> Hi !
> Yesterday it was the third time I lost important files on a
> reiserfs-partition.
> This time I had a reasonable backup.
> So i could minimize the time my server was offline.
> I use S.u.S.E 8.2.
> The first to times reiserfsck was not able to repair any file. I found all
> of them in the directory /lost+found, but that was not good for me. ( 11000
> files there )
> This time about 5000 files were in /lost+found and the rest in the right
> place.
> 
> Is this a normal behavior or do you think I have a hardware problem ?
> Is the S.u.S.E implementation wrong ?
> Shall I change to ext3 ? ( It´s slower, I know )
> 
> Whats the right strategie to recover a defetive partition ?
> 
> Alex.
> 
> 

I once had a similiar problem, the problem was the AMI Megaraid (now LSI 
   Logic) controller. It didn't detect failed disks which resulted in 3 
failed disks of 5 in a raid 5 array and an unused hot spare.
I had to build a completely new raid array. The thrust in megaraid is gone.

If you want to try various methos for disk recovery, you will have to
use dd_rescue to do a complete backup of the data on your disk into a file.
Use the newest reiserfsck.
Copy the backup to a new name, set up a loop back device and run 
reiserfsck --check on it. Then do what reiserfsck suggests.
If --rebuild-tree recovers to less files you can try --scan-whole-partition.
I don't know a way how to recover the filenames, though.
On a mailstore the files residing in lost+found could be scanned by a 
script to be placed into the right mailboxes, but that doesn't work
on a webspace :-(

-- 
lg, Chris