[mythtvnz] All recordings and LiveTV folders deleted on power cut (aka MythTV ate all of my recordings)

[Aaron Whitehouse]

Hello all,

I am using Mythbuntu 11.04 and it has been happily ticking along for
about six months since the last set of dramas (I've been using MythTV
for about four years). I have one HDD for the system and videos and
another for the recordings (and backups of the system drive). I use
AutoExpire, so I had a full drive of recordings, most of which were deleted.

Today, we plugged something into the USB port and the machine
rebooted--something that has happened before and I assume is some weird
short on the MoBo.

When it restarted, everything appeared to be running perfectly, but
trying to play any recordings gives an error that the recording can't be
found. Navigating to the folder, none of the recording files are
there--the folder is completely empty. Bizarrely, the subfolder of the
recordings partition, containing backups of things on the main drive, is
still there and fine. FSCK thinks that the partition is fine (though had
to create the lost + found folder). Playing LiveTV (which stores files
on the main HDD) didn't work, as MythTV had deleted the "LiveTV" folder.
All of my videos are (thankfully) fine. Ironically, all that was deleted
were the things I don't backup...

In fact, everything seems "A-Okay": new recordings record fine,
everything else on the drive seems accessible etc. I've just lost all of
my recordings. MythTV database doesn't seem to think anything was deleted.

There is nothing interesting in either the front or backend logs.

There wasn't enough on there that was critical enough for me to try and
undelete everything and manually associate each recording (most of which
are deleted and awaiting AutoExpire) with a database record, but this is
a pretty major screw-up.

Has anyone got any ideas what could possibly have happened??? It's the
kind of thing that makes the better half lobby for a more commercial
solution and I would hate for anyone else out there to have the same
happen to them.

Thanks in advance,

Aaron