Scott Rose <srose(at)telus(dot)net> writes:
> I'm one of those people who created the system database on one partition
> and put all the application databases on another. The latter was backed
> up, but the former was not. And that drive crashed.
What do you mean by "system database"?
template1 is not particularly critical, and you could survive without
the WAL log too ... but if you lost pg_log (in the $PGDATA/global/
directory) then you've got a problem. Please be specific about what
you have and what you don't.
regards, tom lane