[RLUG] Disappearing data

Brian Morris bmorris at cyberarmor.net
Fri Jan 6 11:09:16 PST 2006


Dennis,

This will not help you now, but I want to point out that your situation
is a clear reminder for everyone of why backing up is so important.  I
can't imagine why anyone, even you, would be doing something as drastic
as setting up a multi-boot, upgrading the OS from a bootable CD, etc.
without backing up first.

If it's important, keep it backed up.

Brian

On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 10:59 -0800, Dennis Bagley wrote:

> I had about 1 year's worth of popmail, about 1/2 gig of downloads of
> various sorts,
> about 3 gigs of music, about 25 eBooks, all my email contacts, a
> Windows virtual machine for VMWare,
> All my bookmarks for Firefox.  You see the pattern - basically all
> data that was in /home/dennis
> except all the directories still exist! just no data in them!
> 
> Dennis
> 
> 
> On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 10:31 -0800, Sebastian Smith wrote: 
> 
> > Here's something we haven't discussed:
> > 
> > Assume your data is on the drive.  You MUST mount the effected drive read 
> > only so that you don't accidentally overwrite any deleted information. 
> > Every bit written is a bit lost.
> > 
> > What type of data were you storing primarily, and what do you want back?
> > 
> > - Sebastian
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Dennis Bagley wrote:
> > 
> > > I sent this message to the rlug list (unfortunately several times)
> > > yesterday but got
> > > -0- feedback from anyone.  I'm still looking for answers because I do
> > > NOT want to accidentally
> > > repeat the problem.
> > >
> > > So anyone have answers besides "42"?
> > >
> > > Thanks again
> > >
> > > Dennis
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Came into my office this morning to discover data missing from my PC.
> > >
> > > I am running Ubuntu 5.04
> > >
> > > On Friday everything seemed to be intact and okay.  I have a dual drive
> > > system
> > > and decided to put the newest version of Ubuntu (5.10) on the second
> > > drive - it seemed to install just fine
> > > and I was also able to reboot into the older version.  I must admit that
> > > I did not run any programs
> > > other than email and the browser before leaving my office for the
> > > weekend.
> > >
> > > HOWEVER, this morning when I tried to fire up VMWare - my virtual
> > > machine files were GONE.  The directory
> > > where the files should have been was there but the files were not.
> > >
> > > Also missing:
> > >   all the bookmarks in my browser (Firefox)
> > >   all the pop3 mail on my system
> > >   all of the contacts I had in Evolution
> > >   all the "sent" mail
> > >   all special email folders I had created that contained data.
> > >
> > >
> > > All my other primary files appear to be intact.  Ideas? Have I been
> > > hacked?  Did the the install
> > > screw something up?  If so, how?
> > >
> > > (Fortunately I had a backup of the VM and the work data is stored on the
> > > server.  But I did not have a backup of
> > > the email and contact info and that kinda torques me.)
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > >
> > >
> > > Dennis
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > RLUG mailing list
> > RLUG at rlug.org
> > http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
> 
> 
> 
> 
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