My webserver didn't start out as a dedicated webserver. It started off as a bit pf a home server to which we can back some stuff up against. Silly me then went and added webserver capabilities to this. In retrospect that was a rather dumb idea... But you learn from your mistakes, and I certainly have with this.
But now that the hard drive has been pulled (and the server rebuilt), how do I get my data off? In a perfect world with unlimited resources, this is a non-issue. But what to do with only existing resources? A bootable Linux CD/DVD is the first thing to come to mind, but it wound up being less simple than I imagined...
Bootable Linux... Easily found just about everywhere on the net. In fact, just about all linux distros come with a bootable "demo" mode if you will. My distro of chocie, CrunchBang comes with a bootable preview as well.
Perfect! I can just toss in the install CD, boot from it, and back up the data from that live Linux. So I did so. Reboot and... we're booting back to the HDD. Alright, time to check the boot order in the BIOS. Power off, reboot, and check out the BIOS. Lo and behold, it is set to boot from CD first. Determined to ensure the CD boots, I set the HDD to the absolute last boot option. Save settings, reboot, and...
Booting from the HDD!? WTF!? I was sure I saved the BIOS settings.
Powered off and checked the BIOS again. Sure enough, the HDD was still last and the CD was still first. Maybe I missed the boot prompt... Reboot and check again. Sure enough, the HDD booted and no evidence the CD was checked.
Maybe the CD was bad, or maybe the optical drive was bad... So I took out a CD drive from another PC (which will eventually return to life as my internal home server), connected that drive as I knew it to be fully functional, and once again tried booting off the CD. And once again, despite my BIOS settings, the computer still booted the HDD. I even tried putting it into another PC. Now thia other PC only has SATA connectors, and this HDD is IDE. Fortunately, I have an IDE adapter card, and used this in this other PC. So this other PC's BIOS most certainly didn't detect the IDE adapter card, and was set to boot from CD, USB, Network, then SATA HDD. Perfect! There's no way this can fail! I had a bootable USB plugged in, bootable CD AND DVD (1 of each), and my freshly installed OS updated and ready to go. Boot it up and...
Boot to the IDE!? OMGWTF AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!
Now, there is no doubt that this was NOT a system failure, and indeed some kind of hack. So I set the HDD aside, grabbed another, and rebuilt my server with a new HDD. This is what is hosting this site now.
The old HDD remains on my desk...
