Database Recovery from Corrupted Dump or Raw database table file.

Hi all,

I have a raid catastrophe which has effectively blitzed a cluster data
directory. I have several pg_dump backups but these will not restore
cleanly. I assume the disk has been failing for some time and the
backups are of the corrupted database.

Using a selective pg_restore on the dumps, I have restored 2/3rds of the
data but some tables I cannot recover directly, so I would like to see
if it is possible to examine the dumps (they are in compressed format)
to see if there are any rows which are recoverable. I do not know how or
if it is even possible to pick out rows from an individual table, when
in all likelyhood the file itself is corrupted.

I also have some parts of the data directory, so the tables may be
accessible if I know the ID of the corrupt datatables. Is the ID listed
in the pg_dump --list file? And can the data be extracted from the raw
data files without running a cluster. I am unsure if there is enough
data to actually start a cluster.

Thanks,

Howard.