Why are there days like this ?? - MySQL Recovery - My story

[bitbender]

Ok someone tell me why...please ?? I'd like to know that the 16 hours I spent slammin my head againt the wall with this restore is just because I do not know what the heck I'm doing.....

Senario:

OS HDD failure on forum server (Bad sectors, it happens)

Upon recovery of OS, discovered that the VB data base HDD had become corrupted beyond repair by MySql. Ok, I had taken two backups at first sign of troubles b4 OS crashed, so I had a current one, and 10 weekly backups behind that.

All ten restored FINE on my test server.

Turns out the VB HDD needed replacement too (go figgure). Thanks to member donations, I had a fresh one on the shelf, again, I tell my self no worries, just more time.

Then, I make the first of many mistakes...I decide to put the new VB HDD in NTFS format.. Fromt the posts here and at .org that seemed to be the way to go, and since I was restoring, it did not seem like a bad choice for the boost in performance over FAT-Boy32...

Thats when the 'trail of tears' began....MySQL WOULD NOT restore the DB on the NTFS drive, kept failing with "You are stupid, and didn't code your MySQL statements syntactically correct, I'm Terminating" -> Actually, it was " Error in G:/forum_B/VBBACKUP_Dmmddyy.Thhmm.sql - You have a syntax error in line 123406, ',;' " - It got this at different lines EACH time in the same backup file, and others, as well. Again, I saw NONE of this behaviour on the test box...go figgure

HUH?? I take same backup file to test server, restore work fine.. BB work fine, MySQLDUMP Unload fine...

After many hours reading anything I could find with NTFS in it here, at .com, and MySQL, I went out to buy a sword to commit hari-cari as nothing was working, and my board had been down over 48 hours, at this point....

Then I say wth...I had one FAT32 partition left on the production server, and so I changed MySQL to go there. Bootd server and did restore to FAT32 partition...WORKS

Ok...so now what ??? Booted Win2K to SAFE mode, and copied from FAT32 drive to NTFS drive ---- Boot production server again, and ALL IS WELL...


WHY??? - I DO NOT understand....but then after 60 hours in recovery mode, I can conceed that coherent thought is not an option for me right now... I just gotta understand what happened to me here.. This product has been Waaaaaay too stable for me to believe there is anything that it did...