I've just lost a supposedly reasonably failsafe and redundant computer to an unusual technical failure. This machine stored all my photos, emails, personal files, movies, music and writing since about 2000. I have tried everything I could think of to recover the data, without success. I am looking for a job and can't afford a professional recovery service. I was taught not to beg, but at this point I can't see another way than to ask for your help. Please read on.

The Situation:

A few years ago I built a server with a very large set of redundant hard disks, as a place to store all my information and to generally declutter my life by putting scanned papers, emails and other personal information in one place. No, nothing is fail-safe.

This worked great for several years. However, during the last two months of school, my trusty Powerbook died, leaving me with the expense of a new laptop and my backup server for all my data. I moved to my new place after finishing school, and built a small office in a closet in my girlfriend's apartment and installed my equipment. Shortly thereafter, the server began to make noises, indicating a problem with the hard drives.

I had it attempt to recover its configuration, which should not be that big a deal -- except that the next day, when I checked the machine, my data was gone. I've tried a number of technical fixes with no success.

Shortly thereafter I contacted Kroll Ontrack data recovery, and spoke with a nice gentleman who advised me that the data should be easily recoverable, but it would cost around E450 to analyze the server, and between E2500-E12,500 to recover the data.

The Proposition:

I am asking you to appreciate the stupid, dumb luck of this situation, to consider helping me out with a buck or two, and to pass this on to some friends or colleagues. I will put as cash I as I can spare into this, but at this point I'm pretty limited.

In return, I promise to:

- use any money I get to pay Kroll Ontrack to recover this server
- if I don't get enough cash, or if there's any money left over, donate it to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Medecins Sans Frontieres evenly (why? Because I like them and I've given to them before.)
- in the event of a successful recovery, send one of the ca. 50,000 photos I lost to each person who donated any amount (I'll try to make it a cool picture.)

I know I didn't take perfectly optimal technical precautions (do you?) I could have invested in a triple-redundant backup system and subscribed to Amazon's S3, along with any number of other steps. I didn't, because I stupidly thought the RAID-5 would be enough. That said, people have paid a buck for dumber things, such as the Million Dollar Homepage (kudos to Alex Tew for making that one work, by the way.) Consider this a worthwhile cause, helping out an average guy with a problem that could happen to you.

P.F.A.Q. (Potentially Frequently Asked Questions):

1. So, what's the box?

The machine is a home-built x86-based server, with an Adaptec 2810SA Serial ATA RAID controller on an Asus P4PE motherboard with a Pentium IV and a gig of memory. Connected to the Adaptec controller are 8 Hitachi DeskStar 250GB SATA drives, configured as RAID-5.

2. What happened exactly? What did you try?

The controller began whistling one day; when I rebooted the server and checked the controller bios configuration, the array was marked as "degraded." None of the drives had any S.M.A.R.T. error messages listed.

I selected the "rebuild" option and let it run overnight. The next morning, the array had finished rebuilding, but on reboot no array was found. Entering "manage arrays" indicated that a configuration had changed and asked me to reject or accept the change; rejecting the change showed the array as correctly present but inaccessible (with correct parameters), accepting the change listed no array.

I found several posts from people with similar problems; the Adaptec-supplied solution was to back up data (not an option since I can't boot as I no array was found), delete the array, initialize the disks and re-create the array with the same parameters with the "quick init" option. I successfully did this; the array was found but with no data present.

I've since hooked up an IDE boot disk running FreeBSD 6.3; the array (aacd0) shows no boot record, no partition table, no superblocks, nothing. Running a number of tools like sleuthkit and gpart shows that there is data present on the array, but I have no clue how to go about it. I'm too scared to re-create the partition for fear of causing even more damage. As it stands, it looks like the primary partition is gone, taking superblocks, file system tables, inode information and other important stuff with it. Photorec is currently running, but would take upwards of 4 months to complete. I doubt the machine will last that long.

3. Why is this so important?

It's nothing on the scale of the universe, but it's important to me. The machine contains pretty much my entire digital life for the better part of the last decade. It'd be nice to have it back.

Among the stuff I had on it were my restaurant and business school blogs (which I could probably partially recover from google cache), photos dating back to 1998, mail backups, all my files from previous jobs and projects, all my scanned papers, etc. etc. etc. -- you get the idea. 4. How can you be sure the data is still there?

Even if I had reformatted the drives (which I didn't), data would still be recoverable using forensic technology. The array was supposed to re-build itself and let me copy off my files, and instead destroyed the information the computer needs to access my files. Think of it as having a nice car and losing the key; you can't afford a locksmith, and you're tapping around in the dark with a set of paper clips and a set of highly advanced lockpicking instructions -- no matter what you do, there's a huge risk you'll scratch the paint beyond repair.

5. Two disk crashes in 2 months? How will you make sure this doesn't happen again?

If I can get the data back, I will put an external hard disk on the server for occasional backups of my most important stuff. As soon as I can afford it, I will buy a mirrored RAID 1+0 NAS enclosure.

6. This is a beer money scam, isn't it?

No, honestly, it's not. It's just dumb, tough luck and I'm asking you to trust me that I'll put your money to the described use. I have a pretty visible online profile; if I were to jerk around it wouldn't be hard for anyone to slander me beyond recognition -- why would I want that?

The worst that could happen is that I donate your dollar to a good charity. I don't get a tax break out of it (I'm looking for a job right now, and even if I did have a salary, I just moved to France and have no idea how tax deductions work here.)

7. Why you? Why not a more worthwhile cause?

People spend small amounts of cash on far stupider things (see "Million Dollar Homepage" above.) This is one of those "real people problems" that I honestly don't know how to fix otherwise.

As for more worthwhile causes, by that logic I shouldn't have given a euro to the bum last weekend so he could get a cup of coffee. Nor should you ever donate to 99.999% of charities because there's indubitably a few thousand starving orphans in Darfur who need your money far far far more than I do. Now ask yourself -- did you ever send them cash? Why not? Do it anyway. Do it now. You'll feel better for it.

While you're at it, 3 bucks for Brendan is a worthwhile cause as well.

If you can pop a dollar or two my way, I'd sure appreciate it -- but please no more.

Thanks for your attention.