Broken Tables?

Hi, I'm working on a disaster recovery.......

 

 

 

When I do a

psql> SELECT * from tablename;

 

I get the full table back, but when I do a

 

psql> SELECT * from tablename WHERE column_name ='variable';

 

it returns empty rows even though I know for a fact and have checked using the select * query that rows should exist and have the variable in the correct column!!!

 

I could do a select *, grab all the data then drop the table then create the same table again and feed in the data, but I wonder if there is a better way???

 

Cheers...

 

James