Dialtone internet is an extremely bad business. Their tech support mistakenly reformatted the hard drive of our running server, destroying 8 GB of important data, re-installed the OS and then emailed us saying everything was running fine.

Afterwards, they lectured us the benefit of using their backup service. Their VP claimed that they are not liable because per their contract, they can do anything, and in any event, they are not liable, the most they pay for compensation is one month fee.

Hi,

This is ridiculous. I cannot expect or think about something like this happening to me.

In such a scenario may be my customers will chase me to death ! I hope you manage the situation somehow.

My best wishes are with you buddy.

Abhishek

wow, something like that could ruin a webhosting company :eek: i wish you good luck!! :)

Perhaps a lawsuit is in order.

Forget about a lawsuit. Most any host and company that provides a product has a disclaimer that they are not responsible for any losses beyond the replacement of the product itself.

You should have your own copies regardless of any back ups done on the server. Hard drives fail. What do you do then? You'd only have yourself to blame.

Anyone with a web site should maintain their own data. Even companies that claim to perform back ups may not do it on the schedule they claim.

Around three years ago, when I was using AIT, I got a notice from them that they had had a problem on the server and had restored some data. However, it seems their "weekly backup" was a month old. Imagine that!
I had always maintained my own files and I was able to bring my sites current in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, I had backed up my forum and there was hardly any loss there either.

To put it simply; You know how the local fair's that come to town, set up their rides and all the tickets say "Ride at your own risk -- we're not liable for anything". That's a lot of BS. You would have limits to what you could seek in court financially, because no contract would clearly state they aren't liable for their own neglect. It depends on what you lost, the value of the data involved and how much they will make up for it.

Accidents happen, people make mistakes... but boy, what a big mistake. That's probably the biggest, worst mistake any NOC could possibly make. I had a somewhat legal-ish battle with a rather large online banner ad company. ME vs. all of them and their lawyers, etc. I must have exchanged countless emails with the company's vice president, whom stubbornly and adamantly denied paying me for the money I earned from serving their banners. Their contract's terms clearly said the "no matter what, you agree we can't be held liable for anything"... (and stated I agreed to that upon signing up).

I did reach a settlement with them and I refused to back down. They tried their best and they were _not_ going to pay me, but I wasn't going to believe they weren't liable for anything that they did -- that's impossible. I tell you, it doesn't matter what it says or what you agree to, if they are guilty of gross neglect in some manner. There's always a reasonable amount of liability, before they must offer a 'reasonable' settlement, no matter what you agreed to.

These terms were surely for many things, including their employee's mistakes, but depending on the circumstances and what they offer you for this disaster, you still can seek a legal remedy in a court of law. That's not to say you definitely can or that it's a good idea, but never, ever simply back down and say "Well, I did agree", when you never clearly agreed you wouldn't be properly taken care of given some circumstance as this. There's always loopholes and people can and should use them, if they refuse to be fair about compensation for this action.

Any company can try and stand behind that claim, but I guarantee you, that if you rode a ride at the fair, even if the ticket says "ride at your own risk, we're not liable for squat!", that if it broke and someone died or was injured, you'd be right in assuming they would be paying and would be held liable. In fact, in many states, even for warrantee's on products, they are extended by law, even if the manufacturer only warrantee's a product for a few months and the purchase ticket/contract says you agreed to that duration. The same can (in a matter of speaking) hold true for other things as well.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, and this might not be an option at all depending on your situation -- so don't just assume you could have a case -- but you could and you might consider seeking legal advice if you aren't happy with whatever DI offers you for compensation. Hopefully they are smart enough to at least not give you an attitude about it and try an work with you to get you happy with some sort of settlement or compensation of some sort... but personally, any company that screws up that bad and just tries to had behind and impossible disclaimer, would drive me to take some action in response.

Man... that sounds like a lawsuit waiting around the corner .. :)

Good luck,

It's always easy to to say that you need to have your own backups. At friday I worked almost 5 hours at my search engine and also transferred many weeks of work from another search engine.

If DTWebworks decided to format my harddisk just when I had finished which I know they would never do (Hi Charles :) ) I would have lost weeks of work and taking a backup would not be the first thing to do when you have worked for so long.

I know this was a "different" example but I think the company/host should always offer more than just a month free of hosting unless you are paying 2000-3000+$.

However, it is, of course, not only difficult to assess the damage, but prove it -- for both yourself and DI. In fairness out of it and why there are these terms, is partly the difficulty there would be in proving what you lost and the value of it. Who's to say? Also, why didn't you have a backup yourself of this data, if it was of value? Did you have any backup plan and perhaps they didn't have a more recent backup, as per what is in your hosting plan and what you pay for? If nothing else, hopefully DI will have learned from this and implement some policy of doing a full and complete backup of any server that they decide to wipe the disk on. And, certainly, to make sure it's the correct server of all things.

May I ask what tech (just the first name) took care of this ticket and wiped the wrong server? I ask, because the other day a reboot request was sent in, due to a faulty drive on a secondary DNS server and the guy mistakenly rebooted the primary -- so there was no DNS for a few minutes (not a big deal, mistakes happen and that wasn't a big one). However, still, that does make me wonder if it was the same guy. That'd be something.

Welcome Back

Tim, where have you been

Joe

Hi!

I can't believe that they reformatted a harddisk by mistake. I am pretty sure they double-check before formatting a harddisk because of the work involved with reinstalling everything and the trouble if customer data is lost.

Isn't it possible that the drive broke down and they installed a new one for example?

Any comments from DI on this?


kryps

Originally posted by Duster
Forget about a lawsuit. Most any host and company that provides a product has a disclaimer that they are not responsible for any losses beyond the replacement of the product itself.

....


While I agree with most of your message (especially the part about making sure you have backups), I just want to comment that there is a difference between a hard drive failing and negligence on the part of a technician.

Good practice dictates that a technician should check and double check that the drive he/she is reformatting is actually the correct drive. The person is a professional, and should have the rigor of the profession.

well, on the other side, i think the tone of DI sounds no good to their customers... They just protect themselves - shouting not responsible for any lost bla-bla-bla, rather than say sorry or would have improvement or fire that technican etc.

I doubt this business manner can be a good manner for a successful business...

Just my two cents

Originally posted by Mike the newbie
While I agree with most of your message (especially the part about making sure you have backups), I just want to comment that there is a difference between a hard drive failing and negligence on the part of a technician.
Well duh! The point is that regardless of the cause of the loss of data, one should have their own copy.

On a separate note, none of us know what happened at DI. We are only hearing one side of the story and most of us have seen cases where the facts have been misrepresented. That may or may not have happened in this case. Regardless, I'm not making any comments about the cause of the loss.

One should maintain their own backups regardless of any backups offered or subscribed to .

Having your own copy is not the issue. You have service with a compay that you hope you can trust. They messed up and owe you that. They need to step up to the plate and fess up. Sue them if you can. That's BS.

dupe.

Of course this isn't what you want to hear...
You should never have 8GB of unique data that you don't have a copy of somewhere else.

Especially on a web server where crackers break into hundreds of systems a day and wipe them out for fun.

Yes, the vendor made a mistake, but the responsibility lies with the customer. The vendor should give you 1 month free or something, but beyond that -- it is your issue-- it is your data.

THIS RISK IS VERY COMMON!
======================
I have been in computers for over 15 years, I have done full tours of over 12 major NOCs in the past 5 years.

The truth is that most ISP's are full of "Cisco router type guys" who barely know their way around a PC. Installing RAM, operating systems, whatever -- they consider all this a drain on their time. Again, this is the real world. How much exactly where you paying this company a month, $300?

All the racks look the same, most the computers look the same, it isn't that hard to mix up a computer. Combine that with staff turnover rate that means you often have new people there... or people working in the middle of the night when mistakes are easier.

These are human beings, be realistic! Human error is always a factor. You don't fire people because of 1 mistake, you have to assume there are risks and they go with having someone else do the work. Haven't you ever erased your own data by accident?

This is the real world. These risks are very real and I suggest it be a lesson learned. The data is not going to get back... this is lesson 101 of computers, "save your work." If you have data of that value, representing hundreds of users, that is all the more backups are critical.

Mistakes do happen! What does it matter if the mistake was from the guy on the assembly line who made the hard disk that failed after 3 months or if it was the guy who was installing your operating system or racking the computers? You are just being reactionary to problems, you have made no effort to prevent what is a very predictable problem (no backups).

You don't make backups for any reason other than mistakes.

Like I said, insists on 1 or 2 months free, or a refund if you intend to cancel with them. Beyond that, it was just human error.

Analogies
=========
Ever rent a car? Turn down the insurance they offer? Great, you save $5 -- until you get into an accident.

The vendor is on very solid ground saying they offered backups and you refused them. Learn your lesson. Take responsibility for what is yours. There are infinate ways that the data could have been lost.

Instead of all this sue sue sue them, go get your lawyers advice.. why not work directly with the vendor. make them give you free backups and months of service. These services cost them next to nothing... you get lawyers involved, the only one who wins is the lawyer.

not really, negligence is negligence. the waivers you sign when you go skiing don't mean anything.

just because a ski resort offers to sell you a helmet doesn't mean you can't sue when you crack your head open on a badly maintained course.

you cannot disclaim against negligence. and from the sound of it, this sounds like it was nothing but that.

note: i don't have an opinion on either company. i'm simply stating what i believe to be the legal landscape in this matter.

Originally posted by StephenRS
The vendor is on very solid ground saying they offered backups and you refused them. Learn your lesson. Take responsibility for what is yours. There are infinate ways that the data could have been lost.
[/B]

nopzar -- what I'm stating is that this type of attitude you have is what makes America (and some other places) suck today.

1) Don't do reasearch. Don't learn from 50 years of computer experience that backups are important.
2) Give your system to someone else who does their best but makes a mistake.
3) Whine that it not your problem.
4) sue, get the police / lawyers / government to take responsibility to "protect" you from not doing #1 above.

What ever happened to evolution? Instead we have replaced it with law.

Evolution says: You learn from mistakes, you try to prevent things. 50 years of history says backups are very important. Both you and the ISP are learning this. YOu work together to learn from this mistake and try to do better next time.

Backwards lawyer thinking: You just let crap happen, don't reasearch up front (other than the legal agreement), and you sue when someone makes a mistake.

It is NOT that hard to accidently format a hard drive. If you do 10,000 computers the universe dictages that do it on at least 3 or 4. YOu might be unlucky and it be your first day. Likely the real mistake rate is much higher than 4 in 10,000. As others in this thread have pointed out, hard disks and other things fail that dicate you put a general solution (backups) that solves almost all causes of failure.

If there is negligence, it is on the part of the person responsible for the data, not the person responsible for the computer!

Yes, if they accidently reformated your computer and mixed it up with another in the rack -- they owe you compensation -- but only for the time lost due to the outage, not for the "millions of $ your data is worth". That is exactly what "limitation of liability" means.

I have been involved in situations like this with outside firms for some very wealthy people... smart business says you do your best and move on (evolution). Saying as old as time, don't cry over spilt milk. Just because others say you can involve the law, that doesn't mean you have to. I'm on the other side, suggesting that you can never really get that data back, don't blame your ISP for the laws of the universe.

Yes, some probably consider me some kind of kook -- but if you encounter these types of problems enough times you too may realize why things cost so much... people not taking responsibility for the fact that the whole computer business (industry) is still in the infancy and we are all learning. Neglegence is a two way street... this case is not 100% vendor fault. I would suggest it is at least 50% - 50% -- lack of prevention combined with human error. Both of which really are human error. Both humans (customer and vendor tech) made mistakes... embrace and learn from the problem, move foward.

i thought this level of idealism was a thing of the past ;-)

seriously though, welcome to the real world. it's not neccesarily _my_ attitude. i'm merely stating the legal recourse that a consumer has. i've lived in many different countries and do i think we live in a very blame-shift society here? you betcha. is it the best thing to do? i don't really think so. will i play by the rules to maximize my options _as a consumer_? hell yes.

the host is protected by liability limiations, but the consumer shouldn't just run home wishing that they had subscribed to a backup service. we're not talking about an act of god here. we are talking about negligence.

welcome to the real world. get with the program or get rolled over.

Originally posted by StephenRS
[B]nopzar -- what I'm stating is that this type of attitude you have is what makes America (and some other places) suck today.

nopzor -- OK,

so sue them. spend $10,000 on lawyers -- and spend months... which isn't going to get your data back.

My Point:

Cut your losses. That is the "true real world". This is business. This customer (the person who started this thread) obviously has never been through this situation. I've been through it dozens of times, I'm giving REAL advice. (Not to say that you aren't giving real advice too, there are way more than two sides to this problem.) These people who say "sue" are dreaming if they think it is really going to do anything but make a few lawyers more rich than they already are.

Sure, maybe 2% of such cases makes $1M for a customer. Heck, we all read about the cases where the best finanical thing that ever happend to someone was a neglegence or insurance case :) Burn down your own business, right? but in the real world, a problem like this is not a windfall and is just a drain. Cut your losses... 98% of such legal cases are just distracting you from repairing the real issue"

you better start rebuilding your data, working hard to earn your customers (web visitors) back. I expect most here will agree that the webmaster is responsible for backups (either paying for the ISP to do it, deciding that it isn't needed, or keeping copies of data on your remote development system). Of course, most webmasters barely seem to understand computer too. But let's not put the ISP's in the middle of that, they are charging us enough already.

THAT is the real world as I see it.

nopzor - I do respect your side, this is a fun debate :) This guy obviously is new at this (or wouldn't have not done backups) and he deserves to hear from those who have been there (data loss, outside vendor mistake situations). There are different paths...

If you want to sue, better go join a law forum :) Also be aware that some of us have done this and all we did was spend a lot of time and finance some lawyers. Here on this forum we are mostly techs - people who are focused on the technical and basic contract (prevention) issues. At least that is what I've observed here.

Originally posted by Duster

Well duh! The point is that regardless of the cause of the loss of data, one should have their own copy.

On a separate note, none of us know what happened at DI. We are only hearing one side of the story and most of us have seen cases where the facts have been misrepresented. That may or may not have happened in this case. Regardless, I'm not making any comments about the cause of the loss.

One should maintain their own backups regardless of any backups offered or subscribed to .


Two issues here:

1) should someone have full and appropriate backups for their data? Absolutely.

2) should technicians apply good practices when they reformat drives? Also absolutely.


The lack of the former does not absolve responsibility for a problem with the latter. However, if the reformatting is a result of professional negligence, then the damages could very well be limited to those incurred had full backups been available. The amount of those damages most likely have been specified in the contract when the service was purchased.


Your point about only hearing one side of the story so far is well taken.

I think we all agree such a situation is not fun.

Web Master 2 - the original poster -- where are you? Any updates to the situation?

Originally posted by StephenRS

You don't make backups for any reason other than mistakes.


Wrong. You also make backups because hard drives can and will fail. They have gotten much more reliable over the years, though they still fail.

It's not always realistic to be able to backup such a large amount (if it was indeed a large amount) of data to your local system/network and you might have to rely solely on backups provided by the company you host with. Some do provide nightly backups, and if your data if that important, that would be wise.

Also, having a second drive for a backup that is mounted and unmounted at certain times of the night after doing backups of the newest files (incremental) would be low on resources and time, and if something like this did happen, the tech would not likely mount another drive and wipe that too -- not before noticing it's the wrong server.

Further, and again, perhaps they will better check what server they are doing such things to next time, and make a temporary, most recent backup before wiping the drive (you never know anyway, things do happen!). They also might have very well have fired the individual responsible for this disaster. I would suggest, that people at least backup the most important files locally -- whatever amount of data their local network or system can reasonably transfer and store as well.

DUSTER,

I ask that you please correct your poor quote of what I said!

You quote one sentence summary of a previous paragraph, and you respond by saying "Wrong. You also make backups because hard drives can and will fail. They have gotten much more reliable over the years, though they still fail."

------ You left off the prior paragraph to the sentence you quoted . ---

Partial quotes are called "taking things out of context" and is a low blow when making arguments.

Your "correction" actually agrees with what I said.
I wrote:
Mistakes do happen! What does it matter if the mistake was from the guy on the assembly line who made the hard disk that failed after 3 months or if it was the guy who was installing your operating system or racking the computers? You are just being reactionary to problems, you have made no effort to prevent what is a very predictable problem (no backups).

You don't make backups for any reason other than mistakes.

-----
As you can see, that single conclusion sentence was tied to the prior paragraph. I was implying that hard disk failure is a real risk. But my point was that a disk failure is just another form of "mistake". I attribute hard disk failures to human beings. Ever heard of a "car made on Friday"? Hard disk parts don't just random fail, you trace them back to specific causes -- typically assembly mistakes or poor QA of components, poor cooling in the computer (especially rackmount), abuse during shipment, external vibration during use, etc.

Good backups deal with almost all types of data loss problems. Be it someone who drops your computer from the top of a 7' rack (breaking the hard disk) or accidentally formatting the wrong partition. These are both "human errors" where data can be lost.
------
End Rant:
Sorry to everyone else, but this is beyond a pet peeve when someone quotes part of an idea -- when I never said that statement by itself.

Stephen, don't worry, you don't have to apologize for clarifying something. Keep in mind that every now and then people will misread something or just not quite understand it, and when that happens we encourage clarification. Be well...

Tim_Greer - I agree with you that 8GB is a lot of data... but I wonder if it really is all unique data.

I've done a lot of work on this type of problem in the past. You know what I find in most cases? The data is very poorly organized. Often SQL databases are set with text fields way too large.

I've found that may a "8GB database" can be exported to plain ASCII CSV files and compressed with ZIP archive to under 1GB! Databases have a lot of duplicate data too (indexes) for performance.

The person who started this whole thread seems to have not returned, so we really don't know what that 8GB is... but if you really have 8GB of (non compactable) unique data -- not getting on-site backups would seem (on the surface) to be a very poor business decision. In fact, I would go so far to say that you should put a tape drive in the computer itself and pay the ISP to change tapes out for you. I've seen some of this do this at very reasonable cost.

You can work out some type of system where they charge you 10 minutes for each tape change... or 6 changes for 1 hour of their normal rate. Sometimes it actually comes out cheaper that the ISP provided backups... as most ISP's consider backups a "premium service" and seem to charge more than it really costs.

Most web sites don't have that much unique data... most people after lots of space have large graphics (or video) files... 8GB of data is way beyond your average web site. At least in my observations...

Chicken - haha. Yes. What got me set off was that I had read the reply earlier today and thought nothing of it (I agreed with DUSTER's response). It was only later when reading the thread a second time I realized that it was ME he was quoting -- I couldn't believe I said that!

What's funny is that a lot of really good discussion goes on in some of these threads that the original poster seems to disappear from. Pretty much like the person who started the topic really just wanted to "vent" and not discuss solutions.

Night, 1:45am is time for bed.

1998, digitalnation

i had a server there... everything was working fine. suddenly i was not able to access the server via telnet/pcanywhere ... no way to get access. I can not understand what happened (3 years thinking about it, of course I can not exclude a hack).

I had contacted digitalnation telling them to sort everything out (can't remember but off course paying them for every hour) immediately.

what happened? they wanted to setup the box again and told me they will restore all my data by using the tape backup...

BUT the tape was nearly empty.

Want to know why? even if i had contacted them immediately, it took more than 24 hours to get them working on my problem... and as you can imagine (i had no rotation) the only existing good backup available was overwritten.

I know.. I'm the only one responsable for the data, I do know this and agree this. BUT... overwriting the only good backup (all they had to do was to react earlier or at least to be so clever to put the tape out of the streamer) killed my hosting company. Sure.. it is my fault ... I had to take more backups... daily onto another server... outside their network... outside their server... but.... I did not.

enjoy ;)
tortellini

P.S. do never feel save even if you make a daily backup... ;)


p.s.s. for all those who read my other posts... this is the main reason of my nightmares about dedicated servers

Originally posted by tortellini
it took more than 24 hours to get them working on my problem... and as you can imagine (i had no rotation) the only existing good backup available was overwritten.

Damn! I nearly can feel your pain you had then...

I don't consider a tape slapped in a drive a real backup unless there is rotation with offsite storage. I've been getting quotes from the alot of companies for a managed, dedicated box, and alot of them say "tape backup" but what they mean is "we put in the drive, insert 1 tape and you back up to that 1 tape, no rotation".

To me, this is only false security. But again, its the difference between the $99 server and the $600 server. You get what you pay for. If you know of any reputable company that offers a true managed server for under $300 a month, steer me their way. So far, the best i've found is $450/mo.

Best bet is raid, combined with a daily and weekly backup to tape, with offsite storage of the not-in-use tapes in a fire vault. Better yet, have em do weekly backups too, and send you the weekly tape. You then send them back the previous weekly tape. Is this gonna cost ya some $$, especially when sending tapes certified, sig req with insurance? Yup. But....it may be worth it.

Also...test your back ups. nothing sucks more than doing all the above, and then discovering that all your tapes are blank cuz of a misconfigured backup program.

Good luck.

Originally posted by StephenRS
DUSTER,

I ask that you please correct your poor quote of what I said!

Partial quotes are called "taking things out of context" and is a low blow when making arguments.

Your "correction" actually agrees with what I said.

It wasn't a poor quote, taken out of context, nor even making an argument. It was merely adding a reason for backups that you overlooked. Hard disk failure is not always atributable to human error. Parts wear out, they fail for a variety of reasons, many having nothing to do with human error. Disks are spinning at 7200 revolutions per minute, 10,000 rpm, even 15,000 rpm, and there are other moving parts. Nothing lasts forever.

Had I been quoting you to counter anything you said, I would be in agreement with what you said about quoting out of context (it was done to me in a current discussion about bandwidth). In this particular case, though, I am in complete agreement with you with the addition of failure of hard drives for purely mechanical reasons not involving human error.

Just out of curiosity I started a poll in the "technical issues" forum about the backup method hosts are using. I expect interesting discussions, as some people even think RAID is a backup method...

Stephen, this is true -- about the amount of data that is actually important and the amount that is new. This is why (Maybe I forgot to make it clear and mention it -- I'll have to go back and read my post...) you can use incremental backups, of course. I'm sure I don't have to explain that to you, but for the sake of viewers that might not know, it's where it only backs up the files that have been updated in the last so-many hours (i..e, 24 hours).. each night at 2 AM, it backs up any files within the last 24 hours. This greatly reduces the size and resources taken and makes for easier data recovery.

What I'd do, is a weekly or bi-weekly full backup (well, within reason; anything that's worth backing up -- could be a large amount) and then have nightly backups for two weeks, deleting any backups over 2 weeks old, after it's been replaced by the new one, possibly before... and checking the integrity of that backup, just to be sure before deleting the previous one. This is, of course, all automated. And, that way, you can likely have enough time and resources to backup the important files, as well as any new updates on your local system even, not including the backups on the server (somehow).

Which brings me to the response to Kaith Sutai-Rustaz; you might not have the "rotation" already implemented, but what exactly do you mean? I assume you mean the rotation of the actual tape backups, so you aren't just overwriting the last one and having that as your sole backup?

One post and then out... can the thread starter please contact me if he/she reads this?

Thats pretty cheap, jumps on a company then jumps ship.

Whats the moral of this story kids?

Get Backups! :D

Originally posted by Madman2020
Thats pretty cheap, jumps on a company then jumps ship.

Whats the moral of this story kids?

Get Backups! :D

Definitely. Sure wish we could get an update though... I'm real curious how Dialtone handled the situation.

Originally posted by Tim_Greer
Which brings me to the response to Kaith Sutai-Rustaz; you might not have the "rotation" already implemented, but what exactly do you mean? I assume you mean the rotation of the actual tape backups, so you aren't just overwriting the last one and having that as your sole backup?

Simple. 1 tape per day, with a 2 week supply. (14 tapes). Every day a new tape is swapped in, with the rest of the tapes stored off-site in a fire-proof safe. I've found that the majority of the companies i've talked to when they say "tape backup" they mean a single, non-removed/rotated tape simply stuck in an attached tapedrive. I don't consider that safe or secure since if the server is compromised, that tape is toast. To be on the safe side, I'd also run an additional "weekly" backup, also stored offsite.

Hey, I'm paranoid. :)

Originally posted by JG


Definitely. Sure wish we could get an update though... I'm real curious how Dialtone handled the situation.

I agree, however, I have known Dialtone to be pretty reputable for the most part. Mistakes happen, but mistakes like this one is just not acceptable. I know for a fact that a situation like this will not be taken lightly by their management team. I think this "one post wonder" should escalate to the highest degree if he cannot find satisfaction immediately.

Well, I got an e-mail from Dialtone saying that they had looked into the matter and could not find any instance of this issue. I'd say that that in itself does not necessarily convince me, although I've also sent an email (and another one today) to the thread starter asking for the IP and hostname of the machine. No reply.

I'll wait a couple of more days and if I hear nothing back, I think we can assume this was a bogus post.

Hey, I did not expect so much responses, this was the first time we ever talked about this incident to the public.

We are particularly offended by dialtoneinternet due to their extremely arrogant. We asked for reasonable compensation, such as the fee we paid for the 6 months period of which data are lost (we have been with them for 2 years), they categorically rejected our proposal. We said we have to resolve this in a court, if they can't be accountable for their actions. Their VP replied " it is not a good idea to take this to the lawyers.", "the contract is very clear on what is the liability of Dialtone on such cases. This contract was written by lawyers who are shareholders of the company as well."

So basically Dialtone says their people can arbitrarily destroy customers' data, and their liability is one month fee at most.

This can not be right.

If anyone of you knows any good lawyer on cases like this, please reply.

Thank you for your quick reply to my email, and I'm glad you understood that it wasn't to discredit you. (We do get quite a few, "This host sucks..." threads by people we never hear from again and it is difficult to seperate the truth sometimes :D ).

One of our fourm members here might be able to provide you with assistance in this matter:

Username on forum: iBusinessLawyer
__________________
Law Office of Jonathan Bender, P.C.
<High Tech and Internet Law>
http://www.iBusinessLawyer.com
jbender@ibusinesslawyer.com

Although their liablility is most likely outlined in the TOS, keep us informed and best wishes.

Now I received an email from the moderator that dialtone is denying there was anything like this happened.

This disgusted us.

Until now, we have not yet informed 100,000 members of us what realy happened---our members all blamed us. Now, the matter is about right and wong, good and bad business.

We must let peole know the truth.

Let me quoted the support record (the record on their ticket system), and I will post all email correspondence, if there is more doubt about the facts.


"Dear Costumer,
I'm goint to rebuild your machine. monitoring on your server is disable , i will enable it after finish rebuilding your machine.
Best Regards,
NAME OF DIALTONE PERSONNEL OMMITTED
20-Mar-2001 09:45:53

________________________
Dear Costumer,
we have rebuilt your machine and all the services are working normally.If you have a new question open a new ticket via http://ticketsystem.dialtoneinternet.net
or http://support.dialtoneinternet.net

Best Regards,
NAME OF DIALTONE PERSONNEL OMMITTED
20-Mar-2001 10:34:03
"

Note, the above messages were entered on a ticket system, we never received any notification that they are going to do this, they never had our permission to do this.


Message from our tech person to Dialtone:

"Please restore xxxxxxx.net
Description: The server was running fine after Sunday's reboot. Today, I found dialtoneinternet has reformated the hard drive, which contains gigabytes of vital information. Please restore the data asap. We never requested you to rebuild the machine, we only asked NOC to look for possible reasons of machine failures.

..

We must resolve this ASAP, ..., we have
hundreds of thousands of registered users.

DI0460 21-Mar-2001 00:10:05
"

Now, I am a bit angered, and want to spread the truth about dialtone the world .

hi just my nickel:) but there should be a reasonable way to settle this, as the court system is full of claims as it is. that being said, let me voice in on the side of WM2, a real system admin would have NEVER reformatted HD with out saving the data on that drive or requesting in writting that you back-up your data. i know that if someone pays me to be their system admin (what you do when you get a dedicated server) i am being paid to have the answers, and therefore the buck stops with me.
HOWEVER: please note that this should be a lesson to all BACK UP YOUR DATA!!! if not daily at least once or twice a week
deeboy

No matter what we do, we can't bring back the data, they have been destroyed by dialtone.

1) We had made tgz files for all data on the server, and was in the process of transfering them to another server(one also hosted by dialtone, used for backup purpose too). The dialtone people's sudden reboot and reformat of the machine terminated the transfer, so we only got 30% of data transfered.

I wanted to cry loud that day.

2) Even in the extreme case of harddrive failure, as long as they did not reformat it, it is still possible to recover the data off the disk, there are services like this.
But what they did was overwriting data on the hard drive.

Originally posted by Web Master 2
No matter what we do, we can't bring back the data, they have been destroyed by dialtone.

1) We had made tgz files for all data on the server, and was in the process of transfering them to another server(one also hosted by dialtone, used for backup purpose too). The dialtone people's sudden reboot and reformat of the machine terminated the transfer, so we only got 30% of data transfered.

I wanted to cry loud that day.

2) Even in the extreme case of harddrive failure, as long as they did not reformat it, it is still possible to recover the data off the disk, there are services like this.
But what they did was overwriting data on the hard drive.

Cry, cry and more cry... Why don't you have your data backed up? No matter what mistake occured. Your hard drive could have ate it. Some of your data could have been backed up. This I would pursue.

You say your data was 30% backed up. Why did you wait until then? Did you find out that maybe there was a problem, and decided to be smart? I do not know how long you have been in this business or a customer of Dialtone, but I must harp on this again.

I am surprised that someone who has 6GB of solid data would never consider hardware errors or shall I even say it? A possible hacking.

If your business depends on a server, you should have a backup. If I have a an office or a store, I would by insurance.

You keep putting total blame on your provider. When partial blame is yours.

How much a month was your hosting contract? How much money is 6 months?

Originally posted by Web Master 2
Now I received an email from the moderator that dialtone is denying there was anything like this happened.

Note that I said, "He could not find information on
this case... <snip> ...and stated that this had only ever happened to one person".

Although he goes on to tell me that he assures this did not happen, I think it is more of a matter him being unable to find the documentation about this case (at least that's what I hope).

OK, I did not have daily backups. But I can recover the data even if hard drive is bad by paying a recovery service. This is a OK, as long as they don't manually destroy the data like that.

The dialtone people lectured us the benefit of doing regular backups. If they knows about the importance of backups, why didn't they backing up the data before they reformatted the hard drive? Even if we had daily backups, there were still new data! This is common sense!


If you don't buy life insurance, it does not mean people can kill you for free.

Originally posted by StephenRS
How much a month was your hosting contract? How much money is 6 months?

The contract was $225/month, but we paid around $600/month extra each month for data transfer.

Originally posted by Web Master 2

If you don't buy life insurance, it does not mean people can kill you for free.

I did not say what they did as being right. Why should anyone buy insurance? Let's just rely on life being perfect.

Why don't you wake up goldilocks?

Originally posted by Chicken


Note that I said, "He could not find information on
this case... <snip> ...and stated that this had only ever happened to one person".



Well, I have no way to check whether this has happened to others.

But this is clear:
Dialtone internet believe that they will not be liable for any damages caused directly by their own manual mistakes. Because of this, they can do anything to your server, without any consequence.

sounds like you are out for blood...

>>>> <<<<
Dialtone internet believe that they will not be liable for any damages caused directly by their own manual mistakes. Because of this, they can do anything to your server, without any consequence.
>>>> <<<<

Yes, and they are up front about it, just like every other ISP. You are responsible for your own backups, as MISTAKES DO HAPPEN.

The story you tell has been played out a million times over the past 30 years by peole who a) didn't do backups, b) didn't do backups correctly, c) trusted an employee / outside firm / themselves when they shouldn't.

What about fires? Earthquakes, air or car crashes, hurricanes, employee going postal at the ISP? What if the ISP decided to shut down and not return your computer for months?

Turn this around and make it positive, it is just a matter of time until this lesson is learned. I learned it 10 years ago my 2nd or 3rd year in the computer business. Backups are always seem like a pain and waste of time until you need them.

>>>>>
The dialtone people lectured us the benefit of doing regular backups. If they knows about the importance of backups, why didn't they backing up the data before they reformatted the hard drive? Even if we had daily backups, there were still new data! This is common sense!
<<<<<

As I am lecturing you. Why didn't your ISP do it? Because NO ISP DOES THIS FOR YOU, especially at $225/month. ISP's charge by the hour, these places are some of the most expensive $/square foot on the planet. Some of the highest trained employees.

Why isn't every car made with 500 extra feet of airbags all around it? Let's blame Ford! You can not afford nor do most "common sense" people expect perfection.

You can try to settle out of court, but it isn't going to get your data back. And don't be surprised if you don't win.

=== final post ==
I do feel very sorry this happened to you, but everything you have disclosed here shows that your data is gone. People here are trying to help you prevent this next time, as no one here has indicated this is a repeat problem with this ISP... it is one of those rare things that happens, and exactly what the "limited liability" clause in a contract is about.

Originally posted by Madman2020


Cry, cry and more cry... Why don't you have your data backed up? No matter what mistake occured. Your hard drive could have ate it. Some of your data could have been backed up. This I would pursue.

.....

You keep putting total blame on your provider. When partial blame is yours.

You are a newbie and you sounded almost exactly like the Mr.H from Dialtone, who said almost the exact words to us on phone. Are you from Dialtone? I see you are located in Florida and registered your nick in June 2001.

lol

Negative, however, I am not the only one who stated that.

Originally posted by StephenRS
sounds like you are out for blood...

>>>> <<<<
Dialtone internet believe that they will not be liable for any damages caused directly by their own manual mistakes. Because of this, they can do anything to your server, without any consequence.
>>>> <<<<

Yes, and they are up front about it, just like every other ISP. You are responsible for your own backups, as MISTAKES DO HAPPEN.



If there was an earthquake, that's act of God, even if youreself is damaged in a quake, you can't blame someone else. But it is completely different matter if one is injured by another person, by mistake or not. The whole issue is about who did it and who is responsible. DIAltone people destroyed a running, busy server by hand.

The following is an email from the their service manager regarding this matter:


I of course cannot begin to express our deepest apologies for what transpired, nor can I offer excuses for what was done. I would like to help, but cannot commit, and give a definite answer until I know what you are asking me to commit to. Please e-mail me so we may resolve this as quickly as possible.


We offered a resonable proposal including returning us the fee for the months they runined, and pay for the hours we spent to restore the many domains and software on the server. Their VP took over the case, and completely rejected our request.

Originally posted by StephenRS
I do feel very sorry this happened to you, but everything you have disclosed here shows that your data is gone. People here are trying to help you prevent this next time, as no one here has indicated this is a repeat problem with this ISP... it is one of those rare things that happens, and exactly what the "limited liability" clause in a contract is about.

Our data was not GONE, but DESTROYED by Dialtone internet's staff, named [Omitted for his career protection], on March 20, 2001, by reformatting the hard drive.

I find a curious that you are so aligned with Dialtone on this issue. I respect your opinion. Let the people be the judge.

<<EDIT>>

Don't they know our server is running on the another provider, and we still have 15 million hits a month?

In this age of web, there is no way to suppress information.

Originally posted by kryps
Hi!

Isn't it possible that the drive broke down and they installed a new one for example?

Any comments from DI on this?


kryps

No, the drive did not break down. We actually staretd to transfer data out of it to another one when they started to reformat the drive. They did not replace the drive. If they did, we could have the original drive and recover the data, right? What they did is wiping out everything on the same drive and reinstalling OS and everything. We spent nearly 100 hours to resinatall the server to a running situation.

look i agree that WM2 should have backed up his data.
but the fact is there to many UNPROFESSIONAL host who take people money and dont know what they are doing, and they think some disclaimer protects them from their incompetence. if you think like that then i wouldn't hire you as my host.
FACT 1: not backing up your own data is foolish (not the case here WM2 did backup, but kept backup on same HD)
FACT 2: as a host you sould Never format a HD without backing up the data on it, cause the customer might not have.
FACT 3: the reason someone hires you to do a job, is either they can't do it themselves or are unwilling to, in either case YOU the host need to be a PROFESSIONAL and double check EVERYTHING! IMHO
deeboy

Originally posted by Chicken


Although he goes on to tell me that he assures this did not happen, I think it is more of a matter him being unable to find the documentation about this case (at least that's what I hope).

OK, I forwarded you the message he sent to us (which I posted here in part), maybe he has short memories. I hope you do not bend to his wishes and delete my thread. I came by this forum by chance, and I find it a good place for sharing information.

He may have forgotten, yes. I did have to edit part of one post, as you misunderstood what I had written you. I just generalized the message he sent me (to get to the point), which I'll add was sent over 4 days ago. I'll ask that you don't quote what I said, as what they said, and to contact them (or him) directly to resolve the matter. -Or examine the TOS you agreed to and if you think you have a case, contact the lawyer.

If you *are* considering pursuing a lawsuit, the first thing a lawyer will tell you is not to say anything publicly.

Originally posted by Web Master 2
OK, I did not have daily backups.

The dialtone people lectured us the benefit of doing regular backups.

If they knows about the importance of backups, why didn't they backing up the data before they reformatted the hard drive?

Even if we had daily backups, there were still new data! This is common sense!

It's also common sense to back up your data and assume full responsibility for it.

You're not getting much sympathy because most of us recognize your responsibility for your data.

You admitted you were aware of the importance of backups. You didn't have any. Some of us have them on our desktop computers. Anyone managing a server should be certainly aware of the importance of them.

Regardless of the reason the data was lost, the responsibility to be able to restore it is yours. You assumed someone else would care as much about your data as you do. You had an expensive lesson in the foolishness of making such assumptions.

You would do well to learn from this experience or you can be sure it will repeat itself in some manner. The next time, you may have only yourself to blame.

Originally posted by Duster
...

Regardless of the reason the data was lost, the responsibility to be able to restore it is yours. You assumed someone else would care as much about your data as you do. You had an expensive lesson in the foolishness of making such assumptions.

You would do well to learn from this experience or you can be sure it will repeat itself in some manner. The next time, you may have only yourself to blame.


What a surprise. Both you and Madman2020, vehement defender of dialtone internet, are posting from the close vicinity of that company.



But if you think that I was asking for your sympathy, you are wrong. I was here merely to tell people some facts, which might be a good subject on this forum for dedicated hosting issues.


I don't assume anyone care about our data. We assume that they will not willfully destroy our data.

Based on Dialtone internet's view point, backups are useless. Dialtone offers backup service at a cost, but what if they wipe out both the HD and the backup?

According to what they claim, their agreement provides no liability. Isn't this situation worrying you (if you are not a host yourself)? What other option do you have?

Even if you have backups, how frequent will be your backup? Daily? If people come to wipe out your sites (with discussions and e-commerce data), and you can backup to previous day, will you be happy? No need to go that far, what if the host of this server come in and wipe out your post, are you going to blame yourself for not saving the message youself?

I clearly understand people are this board have different interests, as far as I know, Dialtoneinternet has read these messages and was trying to covering it up.

We all agree that had he simply done backups sooner, he'd not be in this situation -- even with the drive being formatted. However, this is about the same issue as saying "If you're smart, you should insure all the items in your household, in case of theft, damage by fire, etc." and then giving him **** about it's his own fault, because the city he lives in "mistakenly" demolished his home, instead of the home down the street.

Would you blame him for not having insurance on his household items, more than you'd consider how badly the city screwed up? Point being, backups are a must, a good idea, etc. However, this wouldn't even be in issue if it weren't for DI's mistake -- and this is a very big mistake! Sure, it's due to mistakes like this, among other more common and expected and forgivable reasons of why you'd have backups -- but you don't ignore the fact someone vandalized someone's car and completely destroyed it, because that person wasn't attentive enough to get full coverage insurance! Yes, it's a good idea to have backups -- at least of the data that you can't just recreate with ease or reinstall (i.e., server software) -- but let's not miss the big picture here.

This is more of an issue of why it happened and how it happened, not an issue of how it could have been "less painful" of an experience given other variables. We all agree on that, but lay off the guy, this is DI at fault, and guilty of gross neglect -- they are liable! -- and their resulting attitude about compensation. Could you imagine if a city knocked down the wrong home and said "Well, you should have had insurance. You should know if you own a home in this town, that things can happen -- so therefore we aren't liable and we're not going to pay for buy you a new home or pay for this one to be repaired -- let alone the items within the home!".

Yes, he should have had backups -- had he, this wouldn't really be an issue, beyond DI's screw up -- he could have prevented much of his grief. However, when these things happen due to an action by someone out of ill intent or gross neglect, then you can't argue that this is anything but that company at fault! It's that simple -- not the issue of backups, but the actions of that company's employee and the damage done -- and that company appearing to not try and make up for it.

Now, I'm not trying to bring anything personal into this, Duster, but you insist on making it personal for people, always. It gets old. Lay off the guy already. We all agree about the situation and circumstances, but simply because you want to try and talk down about yet another person -- because, well, that's what you do -- doesn't provide anything useful to anyone reading this thread! DI made a mistake -- they screwed up -- more than he screwed up by not having backups sooner. They are at fault, they are the reason -- so stop trying to argue semantics about it just to try and continue this attitude of yours! I've rarely ran across such an arrogant person... I mean, really.

All you do, is belittle and insult people -- acting like a know-it-all, better-than you type of person nd let your arrogance come shining though -- and on top of all that, will _never_ admit or even indicate or apologize that you just _might_ be wrong about the person or situation. Now, here you are, saying "Forget about DI, it's your fault, you fool!". I'm sure he feels foolish for not backing up the data sooner -- but you know what? This wouldn't be an issue if DI didn't cause it! He clearly said that he was in the process of backing up the data -- why he waited so long, I couldn't guess!? However, he was and it was interrupted by DI and their reboot and then formatting of the drive.

Sure, had he done this sooner, it'd be prevented, but what if DI did this sooner when he was trying to do a backup previously? I mean, don't just outright blame this guy because he's complaining about something he damn well should complain about! In fact, you're first post on this board, we you complaining about a hosting company yourself -- and it was hardly an issue this important and you went on and on about it. I think it's obvious this guy learned his lesson, but this could have been prevented, fully, by DI and by them implementing a policy of backing up data (or at least offering that option to people) before formatting their drive. It's stupid of them not to.

So, enough of this already. I'm sure you're capable of losing this attitude and being more civil, aren't you? Do you just not like anyone, or do you really think insulting people all the time, is some enduring quality? One of the main reasons I stopped coming here and now rarely post, is because of you and your persistence to annoy people and attack their character (I'm sure you'll be thrilled to know that you contributed towards that). If that's how it is here, I figure, you can have it -- I don't have to put up with it -- but can you manage to stop bothering people and just trying to put them down? I mean, it's ridiculous to act like this isn't DI's fault and has only to do with backups. That is possibly your opinion, but due to the circumstances alone -- that is not the fact. Make a little effort to offer something other than your ego, please.

As for this thread, the facts are there. Now, I expect and don't care, that you'll respond with the usual insinuations and innuendoes and insults.. so have at it... if this is what you really need to do to feel better about yourself, or whatever reason drives you to do this... However, back to the situation, facts and reality of it -- DI screwed up and they should compensate him for it -- going by my previous "examples". Feel free to disagree if you wish, I'm sure you will -- and I'm certain you'll let us all know. Just thank God that you're not in control of all the situations people have to deal with or be a victim of. [Don't worry, I won't waste my time responding to your (what's sure to be a) response.]

I am a complete new user to this forum, I came-by by chance, posted a message and then forgot it, until the moderator contacted us to authenticate the message.

So I came back and found so many replies. Most of them friendly ones. Two of the posters, Duster and Madman2020 are pro-dialtone and blamed us, their attitude is unusual, I believe. Of course, they are entitled to their own opinions.

What troubles me is that I found out both Duster and Madman2020 live/work very close to dialtoneinternet. From what I can trace, their distances to DI are less than 30 miles.

Originally posted by Web Master 2
What troubles me is that I found out both Duster and Madman2020 live/work very close to dialtoneinternet. From what I can trace, their distances to DI are less than 30 miles.

I think you're reaching now. I'm pretty certain neither of them work for DI. I live about 15 minutes away from there as well, does that mean I work for DI? Nope. South Florida's a pretty big place.

Originally posted by Planet Z


I think you're reaching now. I'm pretty certain neither of them work for DI. I live about 15 minutes away from there as well, does that mean I work for DI? Nope. South Florida's a pretty big place.


I can't be 100% certain that they are related to DI.
I can't be 80% certain.

But, how did you conclude that they are NOT?

There are only a few posters in this thread from the whole world and a high percentage are from so close to DI? The probability theory tells us something.

Originally posted by Web Master 2
So I came back and found so many replies. Most of them friendly ones. Two of the posters, Duster and Madman2020 are pro-dialtone and blamed us, their attitude is unusual, I believe. Of course, they are entitled to their own opinions.
What we are is pro backup and assuming responsibility for one's data. Neither of us have defended DI. The fact is I have made no comment directly to the loss. We have only your side of the story and I wouldn't comment either way. The same would be true if you had your server at Verio or anywhere else.

What troubles me is that I found out both Duster and Madman2020 live/work very close to dialtoneinternet. From what I can trace, their distances to DI are less than 30 miles.
Instead of making insinuations, hardly likely to endear you to anyone or indicate clear thinking on your part, you could just ask if you had a question. Better yet, you could search the forum. You'd learn a few things that indicate how ridiculous your insinuations and assumptions are.

I've said more than once that I'm about 30-40 minutes away from DI's facility, depending on traffic (they are one county north). I used information from this forum last year (along with other sources in my investigation) to select them, and am one of several people here who has their servers located with them. It just so happens for some of us that we live in South Florida (along with about 20% of the population of Florida). It obviously didn't occur to you that many NOCs are built in heavily populated areas.

Indeed, one of the reasons I selected DI is because they were not far off. Eventually, I plan on switching from a dedicated server to co-location, and the proximity will make it easier.

I've been critical of DI at times, and I'm sure others here will recall that.

To add to your conspiracy theory, I'll state that I've been to where DI is located. I've said that here before too.

:P :stickout (_x_)

Florida - I'm glad to learn that they are using hard disk drives in their computers over there. After hearing about their high-tech vote counting system used in the recent presidential election, it wouldn't have suprised me to learn that they were still using punch cards for storage ;)

Originally posted by Web Master 2



I can't be 100% certain that they are related to DI.
I can't be 80% certain.

But, how did you conclude that they are NOT?

There are only a few posters in this thread from the whole world and a high percentage are from so close to DI? The probability theory tells us something.

It actually tells us nothing. It's a theory of yours, nothing more. Duster doesn't work for DI, as I'm sure out of all his many posts (look at the post number next to his name), that something like that would have came up at some point. I don't know about the other user, but I wouldn't assume either work for or at all affiliated with DI.

Originally posted by Tim_Greer


It actually tells us nothing. It's a theory of yours, nothing more. Duster doesn't work for DI, as I'm sure out of all his many posts (look at the post number next to his name), that something like that would have came up at some point. I don't know about the other user, but I wouldn't assume either work for or at all affiliated with DI.

It's quite alright. Since WebMaster2 doesn't get any sympathy whatsoever from me, I can understand that if I am not a friend, I must be the enemy. I am not siding with either party. If this would have happened to me, I would be livid. What DI did was dead wrong and I simply would not be a customer of them, and I would tell my friends. But I was trying to pass the word, that backups are a NEED.

But obviously since Duster and myself are not giving him a shoulder to cry on, this is what surfaces.

I am done with this thread.

Web master 2,

This happens to me about 5 years ago with a company that was bought by Verio, who I still use and host one server. When that happened I was offered an apologies from their President of the company, that was all. My rep recommended the backups for the future and since that moment, I learned my lesson. The guy that deleted my drive is still there. At least Dialtone offered you 3 months worth of money.

After reading all of the posts here and especially your posts, it looks like you are just the looser, who should take the blame for not having backups. How in this world of hackers, of earthquakes, of HUMANS, you do not have backups.

Take it to your 100,000 members, take it to your lawyer, go nuts to the world, you are the one that didn't have backups. If you had backups none of this would have happen.

I think you should take your post to other places, if you have the time, it looks like you have plenty of time, you will find the same everywhere, it was your fault. If I was you I will take the money and run, an I will buy backups with my new host ))

Just my 2 cents.

Romero

Originally posted by Duster

To add to your conspiracy theory, I'll state that I've been to where DI is located. I've said that here before too.

:P :stickout (_x_)

If DI has destroyed some of your hard work, you may change your opinion a bit. This is a small world. You should know.

I am not saying backup is not important, but no backup can guard against such "mal-practice". To reformat a HD and reinstall OS/web server is not like pulling a trigger, it took many steps, Dialtone internet people took those steps one by one to completely destroy our data, and then email us saying everything is fine. As a technical person myself, I still find that inconceivable. We have moved to some other host, and we found completely different people and attitude, professional and friendly, the host we are using is small, but their people clearly knows UNIX.

Just checked the past billing records, DI has also double billed us before, a common practice by many hosts.

As for the suspicion, it was largely due to the fact that I know for a fact that Dialtoneinternet is trying to shut this thread up. One strategy of course can be saying things against my views and discouraging me from continuing it.

Originally posted by romero
Web master 2,

Take it to your 100,000 members, take it to your lawyer, go nuts to the world, you are the one that didn't have backups. If you had backups none of this would have happen.

I think you should take your post to other places, if you have the time, it looks like you have plenty of time, you will find the same everywhere, it was your fault. If I was you I will take the money and run, an I will buy backups with my new host ))

Just my 2 cents.

Romero

Thanks for the advice.

We will of course take it to our 100,000 members. Dialtone has already destroyed our data and reputation.

Why can't I post here? Isn't this a place for discussing dedicated hosts? What are you afraid of? Nobody even asked you to read this message.

And, why is Dialtone internet trying to shut this thread up?

<<MOD NOTE: I do not concur with the statement above>>

You can help DI to spread the message that they can wipe out data any time. So customers must buy backups at $300 a month, but wait, that won't help either, they can wipe out the backups too, so buy backups of the backups....

Originally posted by Web Master 2


If DI has destroyed some of your hard work, you may change your opinion a bit.
If I had a loss of data for whatever reason, I could have my sites, and all those of my clients (whose sites I administer), restored in a few minutes once the server was operational again. My other clients have been told to keep backups of their data and some were doing it already. They prepare for the worst, as I do.

I know to protect the results of hard work and make sure I have multiple backups. I sure am not going to trust it to a hard drive or any other person. Both can fail.

As for the suspicion, it was largely due to the fact that I know for a fact that Dialtoneinternet is trying to shut this thread up. One strategy of course can be saying things against my views and discouraging me from continuing it.
That's a totally asinine remark. DI hasn't said word one publicly about this and they usually don't on any similar matter. The only time I recall they ever replied to a post was last year on scriptkeeper in regards to a post by someone named vixen who totally misrepresented her situation, which a few people had figured out even before someone from DI replied.

If you continue posting, we'll have to ask the mods to create a fiction forum and move your posts there. They are definitely out of touch with reality.

In fact, I'm beginning to doubt your version of what you claimed happened. You already have mild paranoid delusions and your perceptions are faulty.

Originally posted by Madman2020


If this would have happened to me, I would be livid. What DI did was dead wrong and I simply would not be a customer of them, and I would tell my friends. But I was trying to pass the word, that backups are a NEED.



No one is saying backups is not important. Even when you reformat your PC, the manual says you need to backup the data first. But Dialtone internet did not backup the data when they reformatted the drive. These people!! Don't they know they don't have to reformat the drive to reinstall OS?! What could they possibly accomplish by reformatting the drive?!

And of course, this was an expensive lesson for us: we never expected a so-called "hi-tech" company could make such a basic mistake. Compared to their mistake, our fault is next to 0. The only mistake we made was to use their service.

Web master 2,

You can post anywhere you want, I think you are just giving free publicity to Dialtone. I am just saying that as you see, most of the people here is blaming you for not having backups. Their weekly backups are like $70 bucks per month, where did you get that $300 price?.

I wish Dialtone would say their part their self but they never post here, I know there maybe one employee here, but I don't know who it is, I will call tomorrow and find out from my rep there.

Romero

Originally posted by Duster

That's a totally asinine remark. DI hasn't said word one publicly about this and they usually don't on any similar matter.



Can't you think straight?

How do you know they are not PRIVATELY trying to shut this up?

I said I know for a FACT that they are trying to shut up this thread.

<<MOD NOTE: Again, I can't say I agree with this statement>>

Originally posted by Web Master 2

I said I know for a FACT that they are trying to shut up this thread.

OK, now this is getting ridiculous.

If they were really trying to stop this thread from happening, the moderators (including myself) would have already received legal threats from DI to shut this thread down for 'slander, libel, blah blah blah'.

Has this happened? No.

Is this thread staying open? Hell yeah (if only to see the resolution (or lack of) of this thread), unless it gets out of control (it's already halfway there), then I will throw this thread out quicker than you can say 'Bananas in pyjamas'.

Get your facts straight and stop trying to put words into other people's mouths (i.e. DI) without proof. You're making yourself look even worse.

Originally posted by romero
Web master 2,

I am just saying that as you see, most of the people here is blaming you for not having backups. Their weekly backups are like $70 bucks per month, where did you get that $300 price?.

I wish Dialtone would say their part their self but they never post here, I know there maybe one employee here, but I don't know who it is, I will call tomorrow and find out from my rep there.

Romero


If you can still count, count the number of people who are blaming us, and calculate the percentage, tell us what you get. You can count as many times as you want.

You keep saying about backup.

Now, just answer this simple question:

Should one backup the data before reformatting a hard drive?

>>>Should one backup the data before reformatting a >>>hard drive?

Web master 2,

Of course, nobody is saying that DI didn't make a mistake, that is why they are giving you 3 or 4 months worth of money. That is why you lasted 2 years with them, because they will pay you for their mistakes. I can assure you that the same thing happen in Exodus and you are out of luck. The real fact here is that your backups didn't save "them" and "you" from "their" mistake. Go it?

Since DI is so bad, why you stayed 2 years?? I would not lasted 2 months, if they were so bad.

Just like MADMAN 2020 I am not giving my shoulder to cry on. I am also done with this thread. Of course I never heard DI side of the story, but who cares anyway.

Good night.

Romero

Originally posted by BC


OK, now this is getting ridiculous.

If they were really trying to stop this thread from happening, the moderators (including myself) would have already received legal threats from DI to shut this thread down for 'slander, libel, blah blah blah'.

Has this happened? No.


It's sad to see people are incapable of logic.

You have not received an email does NOT mean others have not.

Give me your email, and I will forward you an email message on this.

Originally posted by romero
>>>Should one backup the data before reformatting a >>>hard drive?

Web master 2,

Of course, nobody is saying that DI didn't make a mistake, that is why they are giving you 3 or 4 months worth of money. That is why you lasted 2 years with them, because they will pay you for their mistakes.


They destroyed our stuff which we spent tens of thousands of dollars on, and they wanted to get away with 3 months of continued bad service?

Yes, it was a mistake to stay with them, and this was the message.

If you are at least pretending to be a objective person, just be straight and answer the two questions I brought up
1) how much % people are blaming us here.
2) should one backup before reformat

Slight correction here. This thread was started on 05-29-2001 and after numerous posts, I recieved an email on the 31st, from DI saying that they could not find this incident (whether that was true or not, I'm not going to guess). The person who wrote me did in fact ask to have the thread removed.

Saying that they are/were trying to shut down the thread is not accurate in my opinion. The email was long and went into detail about various things, and Web Master 2 should realize that I only paraphrased a sentence or two stating why I was writing (to verify the validity of the thread).

I think everyone is open to hearing your story but please do not distort my correspondence with you. I'll ask that you now take the matter up with Dialtone directly or discuss your case with a lawyer.

I don't think this can be resolved via the forum.

You didn't backup things, they accidentally wiped the drive cleaner than a baby's bottom. Time to resolve it now and move on.