The warning signs were there earlier, but I ignored them as an assumed passing annoyance. The hard drive access times were starting to take much longer, but I thought this was due to the crazy number of applications I have running. Then the desktop would stop because it was waiting for IO access, until, the desktop started to barf and the home directory was read only.
I had a dying hard drive.
It was time to look at rescue or migration options. Most of the weekend was lost trying to figure out what to do with the BTRFS formated drive. Searching on it produced confusing results.
I tried various commands, and much waiting as the drive was processed. But in the end there was no improvement.
If this was a Windows machine, I would have had to pay for various bits of software, only to arrive at the same result. With Linux the tools are there for you to use. But, you do have to read up on how to use or not use them. This can be a downside.
Since I had another hard drive installed in the PC that I was't really using yet, I decided the easiest thing would be to set it up as the new home directory, and copy the contents of the old home directory over. When that's done I just change the mount points in /etc/fstab and after a reboot, voila! My user profile lives again.
This is what I love most about Linux, is it's flexibility. This can come at a cost, because it can be more complex, but it is extremely powerful.
Over the years I've had various computer disasters to deal with. In comparison to using Windows, after learning the ins and outs of Linux, I have robust computer profile that can always live to see another day.
OK, I saved my bacon, but how did I get to this point to start with? I'd put it down to running the drive at nearly full. I did start to clean it up, but at 2TB of data, that's a huge task. So started, but then put it off again. This was a big mistake. It's time to purchase extra storage.
I'll be more mindful of the early warning signs in future and be proactive rather than dealing with a near disaster.
With so much of our lives stored digitally these days, data loss can be catastrophic. When faced with an issue like this, the full impact of it might not be realised until some time later, when you finally require something, that went down with the storage.
I'll leave you with this acronym.
BUBYFU
Back up before your f*ck up!