[RLUG] Disappearing data

[Sebastian Smith]

Dennis,

If you're using the filesystem you probably don't have much chance of 
restoring anything.  Forensics is a difficult business, and there aren't 
many good tools available -- I wouldn't expect you to recover much data if 
you could.  Backups are easy alternative, unfortunately this is discovered 
after-the-fact all too often (/me writes a backup script for his 
workstation).

- Sebastian


On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, Dennis Bagley wrote:

> Point taken.  For what it's worth,  I have a partial backup of the most
> critical info.
> What I didn't have were the majority of the pop3 emails and contacts
> (though I think I have an older
> one with at least 80% of the contacts.)
>
> After I discovered the damage I was back up and (mostly) functional
> within an hour after doing
> some selective restores.  I was more curious as to how this happens and
> how to prevent it in the future
> as well as if anything was still recoverable.
>
> Dennis
>
>
> On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 11:09 -0800, Brian Morris wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
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