Re: db recovery after raid5 failure - Mailing list pgsql-admin

From Kevin Grittner
Subject Re: db recovery after raid5 failure
Date
Msg-id 4C1F85A50200002500032732@gw.wicourts.gov
Whole thread Raw
In response to db recovery after raid5 failure  (qcor@vp.pl)
List pgsql-admin
<qcor@vp.pl> wrote:

> I have serious problems recovering our db after recent raid5
> failure.  Long story short - no recent dumps, some missing files
> (like pg_control).

Been there -- at least on the end of helping with recovery for
people in that position with a different database product.  It can
be very painful.  :-(  (I'm assuming from your post that a second
drive failed before recovery from failure of the first was
complete.)

First a word of advice -- don't discard anything.  Keep any backups,
keep the bad drives, keep any logs, exports, reports, or anything
else which might contain fragments of the data.  Make a backup of
what you have now, if you haven't already.  Keep these things for a
long time.

Second, a word of encouragement -- given all these scattered
fragments and enough time and money, you'd might be surprised at how
much data can be recovered.  But time and money is required --
someone has to make the hard call of how much money it is worth to
recover how much of the data.

Based on your description, it sounds like you will probably need the
assistance of an outside company to recover very much.  Possibly one
company specializing in recovery of data off of damaged disks, and
another for PostgreSQL internals expertise.

I don't suppose there's another source for the data to avoid
attempting this recovery?

-Kevin

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