I was doing some cleanup and realized I only had a partial archive of an old photo website.
It’s not really a big deal; I have all of the images.
But I really wanted the full, original site. The version I had was last updated in 2007, and was missing a number of folders.
So I searched and searched and searched all of my backups. Couldn’t find what I was looking for.
I checked archive.org and was able to determine what was missing.
I then thought about the big stack of “retired” hard drives in a closet. I thought there might be one that contained the contents of this site.
And I was right!
I found the drive and I found the kit to connect it to a computer.
I was thrilled that the drive spun up, but less happy that the first two computers I tried only noted there was a drive, but couldn’t show me what was on it.
Finally, my Debian-based ProxMox server was able to mount the drive.
Imagine my surprise to note it had the now infamous Reiser filesystem!
(For those unaware, ReiserFS was highly considered shortly after the turn of the century, but when the author murdered his wife it fell into disfavor.)
And the good news is that the files I needed were all there!
The following images document some of the details of the restore.
