My Webserver died, not too bad I thought, just put a new disc in the server and restore it from my WindowsHomeServer (WHS) backup.
Not a chance, the backup was apparently “good” but when I tried to restore it just didn’t work, it kept dropping the network connection (which is a known issue with no real solution).
At this stage I thought “well – might as well build the server again from scratch, it has been running for a good few years now”
So I rebuild it then load php mysql, apache. I set the correct directives and paths, then open the backup on my WHS Server to pull out the data I need.
Oh Sod it! not a chance it was going to work as “bits” of data that were marked as being on the disc actually were not, and as that included a SQL db, i gave up then and there.
Luckily a SQL backup that I had left on the desktop was intact and after reinstalling WordPress I restored the database. At the moment virtually none of the photographs are there as they were stored in gallery and that is not running yet as the backup for that was completely fooba’d.
I think the disk on the webserver was on the way out, (I had to run a chkdsk the week before) so that might be the reason for the dodgy backups as WHS has restored a PC quite happily before now.