Just my opinion here
Devs are gambling when it comes to save a 5year old DB.
That being said, i honestly dunno the reasoning behind saying " its a test server, we need to preserve the data like it was"
It might not be a coincidence to have the HDD fails when merging pub 9 on Bas.
Saving the data as it was, do not insure that more problems will arise or not.
Best course of action to a TEST server is not saving memories or fortunes, is to take the proper actions to achieve the main goal.
With a Clean DB and a Pub 9 merge, has the benefit that, bugs that are reported after, have no association to a recovered DB.
Again this is my opinion, and has no purpose of trolling, just my POV.
