Fat32 parting shot = disaster

[Dapper Dan 0]

I have been using Linux for almost 2 years. I have 7 Linux boxes I look after, 5 under my direct administration, and 2 for friends that are dual booting. One of the Linux machines at my radio station, the one in the main studio, has a small leftover fat32 partition at hda1 that we've been using to store daily and weekly logs, and daily news. We've been doing all our logs and news from computer since last July. That's 6 months worth of day to day broadcast information that is not only important for our records, but we are required to keep by the Federal Communications Commission as well. By law, the FCC expects us to keep these records on hand in case they need to review our Public Service Announcements, logs of Emergency Alert Tests being transmitted and received, etc.

Last night I had a little time, and decided to transfer those files from 2003, which over the last few days I had collected into one big file, via FTP to our business office just down the hall, for burning and storing to cdrom. I pulled up Krusader, a GUI front end for FTP transfer, and began the process of transferring the files to the office. About 20 seconds into the transfer, everything stopped. After a few seconds of staring blankly at the inactive monitor, I started checking. My worst nightmare became reality. There were no files in the fat32 partition and no files transferred to the office machine. I desperately searched both boxes high and low, without finding so much as even a scrap left over of all that information. Gone. Zilch. Nada. nothing...

 

This experience has left me dazed and numbed. So much so, that I'm not really sure how to act. I'm too upset to be angry. I just feel numbed and empty.

 

We have transfered every daily log, weekly schedule, and every daily newscast to the studio machine via FTP since last July. Not once have we ever experienced anything of this nature. Not once have we lost even a bite of information during transfer from ext3 to ext3. I know now that I made a huge mistake by transferring and storing all those files from the studio's /home partition to that fat32 partition at hda1.

In one moment, 6 months worth of broadcast information ceased to exist. Had I stored those files on and ext3 partition instead, I'm certain they would now be transfered, burned to cd-r and shelved for posterity.

So. even after exclusively running Linux OS for over 6 months, Microsoft still takes a chunk out of my ass. A parting shot if you will. This time, a big one.

I will now nuke and pave that fat32 partition into an ext3, but those files are lost forever.

Admiral LSD told us on another thread that fat32 was a lousy file system that is responsible for much of the problems Windows users suffer. I knew fat32 sucked, but until now, I had no idea how much.

 

I've learned three things from this disastrous experience.

 

1. Always transfer files and back them up on a daily, or weekly basis.

2. Never move files from one machine to another, copy them instead. Once copied, then delete from the other machine.

3. Failing or succeeding in 1 and 2 , never, but NEVER store anything of importance or value under a fat32 file system.