It took the better part of a week, but my computer has finally recovered from a scrambled partition. All my data is intact, though I was very happy to have a complete backup of everything that mattered. The experience, in addition to convincing me never to use a partition editor on anything but a blank drive, also made me think a bit more about data portability. Without another Linux system, some of my contacts and passwords still wouldn’t have been accessible. Exporting custom data to a common format would be a good addition to any backup scheme.
