On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 03:54:07 +1000, Russell Coker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 02:01, Rich Puhek wrote: > > Ted will know a lot more about this than I do, but I'd think that if > > the first two superblocks are corrupt, the likelihood of superblock > > number 3 or whatever being good is pretty low compared to the odds > > that the drive/parition is shot. Perhaps that's why e2fsck just > > gives up on the extra superblocks? Of course, then why bother > > including them? > > In principle it seems to be always a good idea to have more copies of > your data than the software knows how to deal with automatically. > Then if the software screws up and mangles everything it touches you > may still have a chance to manually do whatever is necessary to save > it. > > I recall a story about a tape drive that became damaged in a way that > made it destroy every tape put in it. When some data needed to be > restored the first tape didn't work, they tried it in a second drive > and it was proven to be dead. They got a second backup and repeated > the same proceedure... > > It was only when they were down to their last backup that someone got > wise and used a different tape drive for the first attempt, which > resulted in the data being read without any errors. > > In that situation if a tape robot had control then it would certainly > have trashed all copies of the data. I can imagine similar things > happening to a file system with a dieing hard disk. ..agreed, but there are vast differences between "the first 2", "every other" and "all". ;-) -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-) ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]