[ale] hard drive and databases and missing data

[James P. Kinney III]

I have a postgresql database that appears to have lost data.  It has a
web front-end that appeared to show that all of the data was intact
earlier today. At the end of the day, I did a select to a file. Fields
that I know should have text are empty.

The hard drive this is on was one that was hit by a nasty Windows virus.
I wiped the drive, reset partitions, blew on RH8, and set up this demo
box. 

Is it possible for windows virus damaged areas to still exist after a
repartition/format? Does not the hard drive tests show damaged areas?
Would not an fsck show problems?

Earlier the missing data symptom was shown to have been caused by a
user-unfriendly bug in procedure. That was solved by having properly
trained people on the keyboard. Now it appears to be random data loss
from the database. There are two fields that are always populated OK.
The remaining 35 are either all intact or all blank.
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 

 This is a digitally signed message part