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Code obfuscation is fun. For all you geeks with Ruby installed.

ruby -e “[1383424633,543781664,1718971914].collect{|x|[x]. pack(’N')}.each{|x|print x}”

An abridged version:

dishwasher
freezer
A/C
lawn mower
hard drive
blender

We are now taking bets on the next appliance to malfunction. Any takers…?

Seriously, these are just things. We can live without them. I’m having fun handwashing the dishes (really). Mark was able to fix the freezer with a 20 cent part and a tool borrowed from a friend. The A/C cost a lot, but we haven’t even used it much yet. We’re getting to know our neighbors better because of the lawn mower-our sweet neighbor Minnie mowed the lawn on her side, and we’ve asked another to borrow theirs. Mark was able to rescue all the important things, like pictures, from the hard drive just by thumping the thing (of course that was after a lot of prayer). And I don’t know about the blender. It’s just mocking us, like ha ha, I can break like the important major appliances!

What we’re truly grateful for is that we are all just fine. Please knock on something.

Always back up your data.
Always back up your data.
Always back up your data.

It’s a mantra that I should have repeated more often and invested in early. Last night, I prepared to put an end to my old Linux box that had all of our info on it for the last 5 years, including pictures. I was going to turn it on, start up samba and copy all of the pictures over to the iMac–then copy a few other files and get the thing ready to be a backup server or a giveaway.

When I went upstairs to check the progress of the boot, I noticed that it had stopped. Apparently there was a problem with the root partition.

I ran fsck (file system check) in low level boot and noticed a *bunch* of failed sectors. At first I let fsck overwrite, but then I stopped… too many–and I could see where it was going.

I booted up to the Ubuntu live CD and tried to access the /data partition directly so that we could at least get the pictures off. No luck. I tried installing Ubuntu on the HDD over the current installation. It was able to write a fair amount to the drive, but then it would crash at a certain point.

My bet is that there is a platter that is stuck. I have read several ideas including sticking your drive in the freezer (in a sealed bag) — which many people have claimed that they were able to get it running for about 20 minutes and grab data off of it. It’s no guarantee, but it is definitely something to try. Otherwise, you’re talking about sending it to a data recovery company who might be able to recover data for a fee anywhere from $400 to $3000.

The only thing on the drive that is priceless is the pictures. My wife even said that if we had to choose between going on our 5th anniversary vacation and having the pictures, that she wanted the pictures. I can’t blame her.

Any advice?

Update: I turned on the other computer and heard no clicking. So I “thumped” the drive — took it out and put it on its side and tapped it firmly, but gently and put it in my other Linux machine. I booted it up and Fedora Core 2 was able to mount the /data partition automatically! I logged in as root and ftp’d all of the pictures over to our iMac. I am hoping to get some more, and there were a few corrupted files, but the data is retrieved–without a big expense! I was thanking God quite a bit for allowing us to see the pictures again!