Dear fellow hosting community,

I run a small hosting business called Asiahost.Net. And have spent 2 years bringing it to a stage when it is starting to be quite profitable.

Unfortunately, I suddenly had MULTIPLE complaints from all my customers that the server was down. I then contacted Fastservers.Net support (where my server was hosted), and they promptly replied that they will look into it.

Don't they know that a server has gone down??

Then, they replied that the server was "Toasted". Along with the 2 harddrives (1 of them is my backup drive on that server). They proceeded to replace a new server for me and closed the ticket.

Toasted??? They claimed it was a powersurge on the server. Don't they have UPS or surge protection?

What about my data??? I have many clients whos datas are on that server and the backup drive is where their backups are stored.

Re-opening the ticket, I requested that all my data be recovered somehow. They sent the drive off in an attempt to recover the data on it.

They finally replied saying that recovery was not possible. That they have spent more than $800 on my server , which they would normally CHARGE me for. And closed the ticket. Saying that any legal action would be handled by their lawyers.

I do not normally post in this forum. But I would like to know if this is what the hosting industry has come to. And I certainly would appreciate any advise your folks might have on this.

If Fastserver is reading this, know that you have completely failed to show professionalism and responsibility in this matter. Your support guy Aaron was helpful, but you need to assume more responsibility in this as a company.

Below is the support log. It's really dis-illusioning....

Regards,

Paul Leong
Asiahost.Net

----------------------------------------------------------------------

User/Staff Follow-ups
LJ203
16-7-2003-10:24
Larry
Technical Support Staff
PowerSurge Technologies, Inc. ?
1025 Technology Parkway - Suite A
Cedar Falls, IA 50613
Phone: 800.867.5055
E-Mail: tech@powersurge.net
Web: http://www.powersurge.net/support/
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EDIT HELLO? My customers have been complaining about the prolonged downtime. What is wrong???

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron-Sales
17-7-2003-10:37

Paul:

After reviewing the hardware on the server, it appears the primary drive on the server is dead. I am going to issue a replacment drive on the server ASAP and get our onsite team to do a fresh installation of Red Hat 7.3 on the server for us. I do believe the problems in the past have something to do with the failed drive and this is the best course of action that can take place.

I will follow up with you in about 20 minutes with the installation schedule.

Regards,
Aaron Phillips

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Aaron(All)
17-7-2003-11:05

Paul:

Our onsite technical team has the server pulled and it appears that both the primary and secondary drives on the box have been toasted. They are unable to get either one of these to be recognized on your server in addition to another server.

We are in the process of replacing the server with a brand new one which is in transit to the data center as we speak. Once this arrives our support staff will be doing a fresh installation of Red Hat + CPANEL and handing over the server to you.

If you have any questions about this please let me know.

Regards,
Aaron Phillips

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Aaron(All)
17-7-2003-5:41

Paul:

After a very long and hard battle with your 2 exsisting hard drives the end result is they both have quite spinning. We went as far as attaching a 3rd hard drive to the System Motherboard and within 10 minutes it too completely died. This is one of those rare technical difficulties that no one within our company was able to predict and I apologize for any troubles it has caused.

In the end we took the best direction we thought and replaced the server with a brand new one. Below is the access information for the server.....

[removed for confidentiality]

You will most likely have some configuration to do and if you need assistance with this please do not hesitate to open a ticket with our support staff. Please do not reply directly to this ticket as it will be about 12 hours before you recieve any response.

If you have any questions that I can help you with, please email me directly at (ap@fastservers.net) and I will do my best.

Warm Regards,
Aaron Phillips


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EDIT TICKET RE-OPENED BY USER
So how do I get all my data back?
Paul Leong
17-7-2003-6:50

EDIT Aaron,

Really need your help.My clients want AT LEAST their email archives and data back.

Some of them are legal professionals who have important documents on that server.

I can't email you now. Pls respond asap. I need the data on those HDDs.
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Aaron(All)
17-7-2003-8:10

Paul:

We did our absolute best and believe that a surge on the server might have caused the components to fry. As mentioned neither of the drives even spin up right now. We have spent about 4-5 hours troubleshooting the server and at this point have considered the server + hard drives defective. The harddrives and the server has been sent back to our hardware vendor for evaluation.

We certainly understand your need for the data and hope that you have other alternative backup methods in place. If you have any other questions please let us know.

Regards,
Aaron Phillips

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Paul:

Our hardware vendor was not able to do much with the drive as they both mechanically have stopped working. We have sent the drive to a recovery specialist in the San Jose area who is going to inspect and attempt to retrieve the backup files from the 2nd drive.

He is suppose to call me as soon as he has any information and time frame. I will be sure to keep you updated over the weekend as things progress.

-=Aaron Phillips


-----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul:

Our data recovery team is able to see data on the drive and is in the process or seeing exactly what they are able to get off the drives. Unfortnately the problems we are running into are that we cannot find the exact IBM model of drive to replace the internal mechanics as they have disconitnued the drive. Fortunately we are working with some very good people who can read the drive and are working very hard to get as much of the data as possible off.

I am assuming the most important information that you want is the .tar balls of the website?

Regards,
Aaron Phillips

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul:

Our data recovery team has been unable to get any usable data off the drive and we took it to a local expert to try and assist. At this point we have about $800.00 invested in trying to recover the data without results.

We believe our only alternative would be to send it off to a professional company that deals with this on a daily basis. The estimated cost of this is $1500.00 and not something we can cover. I apologize for the misfortune that has taken place and will follow through with how you want to proceed on this.

Regards,
Aaron Phillips
-------------------------------------------------------------

Paul:

Ultimately we maintain no responsibility for data loss, backups, or restoration of data at any point which is fully covered in our SLA (http://www.fastservers.net/dedicated/sla.shtml). While this is an unfortunate situation and I have provided you with an extended offer to retrieve the data to the best of our ability, we have not been successful. In the end the hardware failure that took place was due to faulty drives and had nothing to do with the Data Center, our support staff, or any wrong doing on our part.

I do understand the frustration this has caused and how important backups on the 2nd drive were to you, but in the end I have exhausted all resources I have available to make this happen. In the end if legal action in being threatened this will be out of my hands and handed over to the lawyers.

Again, I do apologize that we are not able to meet your standards and I hope you understand we have spent a little over 30 hours working on the drive without requesting compensation. Under normal circumstances we would not have done this, but I issued the order to proceed in hopes of retaining you as a customer and getting your vital data back to you. This did not work out as planned and thus we are at a crossroads on how to proceed.

Thanks for your time,
Aaron Phillips

-----------------------------------------------------------------


__________________
Paul Leong
Asiahost.Net LLC
"Web hosting for serious businesses"
http://www.asiahost.net

Well, they did their best.

Posting this into just 1 forum catagory would have been sufficient too. :eek:

Hostnexus,

They said they could send the drives off to a recovery specialist for $1500. If I paid for it. Is that the best?

My server went down with all my data for no mistake of mine.

Someone has to bear the cost of re-instating it. That's cost of doing business and supporting your customers.

If you feel they did their best, it adds to my dissapointment over this industry.

That's why using a second drive ONLY for a backup is not the best way to go. If something like this happens or a hacker gets in all your data is at risk.

You just had a run of bad luck, you can't blame them for your misfortunes.

Sorry bob. Don't use these much and probably got carried away with my need to speak up.

I was with your company before as a client before I started my own server. :)

Like your service very much.

I'm not sure what else FS could have done to help you, as the data may truly be damaged beyond repair. It seems they made a real effort.

Regarding the part where they said they could have charged you for the attempted repair, I'm not surprised. IMO FS really isn't a managed provider any more- they're very quick to whip out the "custom work" phrase whenever you ask them to provide any real work like kernel or security updates. Perhaps they once were, but I'd compare FS to Rackshack these days but with more support during the intial phase when you've just become a customer.

Easybyte : You are absolutely correct in your comments.

Considering they spent $800 trying to fix the original problem with no luck they could have spent $1500 and had the same results.

Always, always, always keep data backed up yourself, and NEVER rely on just one storage location - even if it is on a seperate drive (in the same server). Most TOS specify there is no coverage for dataloss, and it's the users responsibility to make sure it's backed up successfully to a local machine, cd or other reliable source, no matter the cost - thats the "cost of doing business"

In this case, it looks like FS went above and beyond in trying to assist - from the looks of the ticket that you posted, they get a BIG thumbs up in my book.

All in all, the data is gone. I'm sure they'd offer to sell you the drive, which you can then take to a data recovery center and try to have extracted (these data recovery guys are fantastic).

Was this your colo server, or a dedicated that they provided? Sounds like the drives were somewhat old.. just curious.

Best of luck - I hope the data recovery works out for you, and your clients.

Joe

One would think they would have hardware which did they're purpose..

If they replace your server at no extra cost to you then I suppose there isnt to much you can do about it.

I guess hostpc.com has right...
Anyway, you should be glad that they did their best in giving you support and trying to recover your data. It's just bad luck - from now on, i'm sure you will keep your data backed up on your own computer. It's the safest way. And i must admit, i feel sorry about your story. And for everyone lossing their data. But it's just bad luck.

Can't see anything to complain about them. They went up and above what a lot others may not do.

End of the day, you are probably just as liable if not more. You would do well to monitor the servers yourself as well even if they are supposed to do so.

UPS don't really protect against power surges, thought a surge protector would. But from the looks of it, it may not even be an external surge that cause it since the motherboard seems to have shorted a third drive they put in.

They did try to recover your data by:
- putting in a 3rd drive
- sending your backup to a specialist to try and recover it.

in the process incurring about 800 in expenses just on your behalf at no charges to you.

They had also replaced your server fairly quick from the looks of it.

Lastly, no matter how good the data center is, hardware failures do happen.

End of the day, I am surprised you are complaining against them and not applauding them for going out of the way to help you and instead get threatened by you with legal action which the Aaron still answered professionally.

Indeed I am disappointed by how the industry turned out.... but not because of Fastservers....

I'm not an expert on Raid, but I am an electronic technician. Does a Raid configuration run off the same supply? Seems like each hard drive would run off two seperate supplies so there is total isolation between drives. Seems like there should also be two seperate controler cards to isolate each drive from the mother board.

Just thinking out loud how I would design it.

Steve

If we get a dedicated server from a company and the server got screwed, do we get charged $800 because of it? I thought the company would be responsible to replace it.

the $800 was expenses incurred to try to recover the data on top of the server replacement. Read again.

Hardware is like everything else in life... it works and then eventually it dies. Sometimes it takes years, other times it is suddenly!

Did the company "screw" your server themselves? From the sounds of it, it seems as if the hardware was 'toasted'?

I thought the company would be responsible to replace it.
There is a difference between replacing a system and trying to restore a systems data and replacing the system. Most companies will swap the hardware for free... they don't provide insurance for the data and offer to replace that for free as well.

I don't know the whole story, so I am not going to get into a heated debate over this particular issue. However, I do support and help all fellow companies in the industry!

well from a laymans point of view, after reading the help email thing's i think fastnet.net did everything you could reasonably expect, bearing in mind that hard drives do conk out would it not have been prudent to at least once a week back it up to your local machine and store it on a cdrw or dvdrw.......

seems that you should chalk this up to experience and try to slavage some of your reputation with your clients as i presume they are not very happy with you.........

It is never enough to backup to a second drive on the same machine. Never.....repeat after me....never.

Whether it's something very strange such as this or whether its someone hacking into your system, it just isn't adequate. Another example of its inadequacy...someone hacks at 2:00 AM, your backup at 3:00 am, you find out at 4:00 AM, now your backup is the same as the hacked server. Viruses-same issue.

Minimum acceptable....backup to another server. And, if you have any doubts about the data center or provider....back up to a server in another facility.

Once again, I saw raid introduced into backup discussions. Raid is not under any circumstances a form of backup or a substitute for backup.

I definately agree with Incognito but to defend krondorian's position here a little, when you lease a server you should be able to have certain expectations with regards to the quality of the equipment. It looks to me like Fastservers was using at best an out dated hard drive and at worst a partially worn used drive. I would expect better than that if I was paying $100+ per month for a server.

I'd have to agree with blue27 too, there is a certain level of quality expected in equipment. I have a server at rackshack which had faulty memory twice and a bad hard drive 3 times, no joke.

I sympathize with asiahost but its best to do offsite backups and to do backups of the backups, especially if you're hosting lawyers or something.

Thanks all for the replies. I am now working with Fastservers to have the drives sent to me for data recovery.

Your advise has all been valuable to me. I do not agree that they did their best yet. But I do agree that they did better than what alot of other hosts might have.

However, what others might have done may not be a good benchmark for this industry.

I don't get it.

If your drives do not have recoverable data on it how can you blame FastServers?

They do have backup services I am pretty sure that you can purchase. Was this option not available to you?

I had a server with them a couple of years ago and I thought they had very very good support and Aaron is more than fair in all of my dealings with him.

Ya know what - I give a two thumbs up to them - I think the handled this excellentely.

We had 6 hard drive failures in a month. Smetimes the server gods just like to play with your mind. Learn from it and develop a better system. 99% of hosts (that do backups), back up to a secondary hard drive so in a situation like this, I would send both drives off to a data recovery service. $1500 is cheap, by the way.

Originally posted by sprintserve
UPS don't really protect against power surges, thought a surge protector would.


A UPS does indeed protect against power surges. In fact a quality UPS (APC) is superior to a plain old surge protector for many reasons outside the backup battery usage. All of the UPS products from APC (and probably others) filter most EMI/RFI and ensure power remains constant despite a brownout or surge. Most decent UPS's also include a 15K+ lifetime lightning / surge protection warranty.

TP

SecurityMinded Technologies LLC.
On the web at http://www.securityminded.net

Originally posted by blue27
I would expect better than that if I was paying $100+ per month for a server

IMHO, $100/month for a dedicated server is not much at all, it's still a bargain. For this, you will surely get bargain hardware.

Originally posted by NexDog
We had 6 hard drive failures in a month.


Are they mostly Western Digital drives? :)

Time for SCSI drives, btw :)

Originally posted by FHDave
IMHO, $100/month for a dedicated server is not much at all, it's still a bargain. For this, you will surely get bargain hardware.

I agree it's not a lot for a dedicated Dave, but it's a hell of a lot more than your standard reseller plans. I guess it's buyer beware. Ask your provider about every aspect of the hardware you are leasing.

Not quite sure what you mean, I don't put one reseller on one server, so my profit margin is much higher than those providing $100/month dedicated server.

After you consider bandwidth, power, rack space, support stuff, etc, there isn't much left on $100/month dedicated server. So don't expect quality hardware in this price range :)

So would you say that someone paying $20/month for a reseller plan shouldn't expect quality hardware?

Most dedicated providers have setup fees to offset the cost of hardware so I really don't see why you shouldn't expect quality hardware for that price.

Originally posted by blue27
So would you say that someone paying $20/month for a reseller plan shouldn't expect quality hardware?


I would say no :)


Most dedicated providers have setup fees to offset the cost of hardware so I really don't see why you shouldn't expect quality hardware for that price

It's probably just the difference in what we define "quality". Quality server for me will require each part in the server to be server grade. By server grade I mean the motherboard must take at least 2 GB to 4GB of _registered ECC_ memory. Hard drives to be SCSI. RAID is better. Dual Power Supplies will add the weights to define "quality server".

I don't call a "server" with IDE drive and a 512MB-1GB max memory, and VIA chipset to be quality server with generic rackmount or mid tower cases. No, not at all :) I would hate to say this, but any host building up their business on a $100/month server is risking their business one way or another.

I don't see many providers in WHT provides what I will call server-grade servers at such a low price, even with a setup fees. Rackshack is the only one can seem to provide quality servers (their Dell and Compaq servers, not their white boxes) at a low price. Other than RS, I can't find any other. Too bad, RS won't help you much when your server is down.

Just my 2 cents.

Originally posted by blue27
So would you say that someone paying $20/month for a reseller plan shouldn't expect quality hardware? . . .
They could. There are many variables to consider. It all comes down to how many $20/mth accounts the host places on that server, and how much $$$$ they're willing to settle for, in terms of revenue per mth etc.

If you had two server's with two HD's you should just use the backup drive on one server to backup the stuff from the other server, visa versa. :) Well I guess it's a bit late for that now.. But for the furture keep it in mind.

FHDave you are correct.


<Steps up on soap box yet again>

For crying out loud, at $100 per month it is going to take them > 6 months to even see any profit. I am assuming that their servers do cost more than $600 but at the prices of some of these dedicated plans are that you see around here its like you are getting a bare bones system out of compter shopper. If your server goes down in flames in 6 months or so you should say "wow I am surprised it lasted that long with it running 24X7" and realize you get what you pay for.

Don't get a cheap ass server or reseller plan and then wonder why all of your customers are screaming with the s h i t hits the fan.

Man I need to get a grip... I see so many people wanting the cheapest server for $59 and then have the nerve to come around complaining when something does happen to the server.

Guess what? If you want uptime and piece of mind, actually cough up some money and buy quality equipment and bandwidth that you are going to load someone elses data onto. Ohhhh.... I forgot a lot of hosts weekly allowances they get from there parents will not cover the 5K that it will cost for a Dell PE 2650, XEON, SCSI etc...

</steps down from soap box yet again>

You get what you pay for. If you think that you get more then you are about to get the shaft from someone.

I hope everyone has a great weekend :-)

Back up, and back up often. I pity anyone who doesn't because hardware does fail. Even on highly expensive dedicated servers sh*t does happen and you must be prepared for anything because your customers won't be. I don't see any kind of SLA describing a backup solution from the provider so even though it was their hardware that failed, they replaced it in a timely manner. Whilst I'm not giving a "thumbs up" to this provider, they seem more responsive than most.

So why is this a complaint to fastservers ? They can't help it that your harddrives both died. Apart from that, I think they handled it perfectly.

They tried to recover the data for you , but it wasn't possible. There are other companies who won't even try for you and just put a new HD in the server.

Fastservers : Good job !

Originally posted by blue27
It looks to me like Fastservers was using at best an out dated hard drive and at worst a partially worn used drive.
New hdd's don't fail? Interesting. Can you also tell me what brand the hdd was from this post? The year it was made? How 'worn' it was? Maybe even today's winning lottery numbers?

Speculation only gets one so far...
Originally posted by Weberz
Guess what? If you want uptime and piece of mind, actually cough up some money and buy quality equipment and bandwidth that you are going to load someone elses data onto. Ohhhh....
Tracy, but then they'd have to charge more than $2/mo. and scrap the $15/yr. plan. We can't have that now. ;)

The most inexpensive dedicated server is great to run specific apps on, as step up from virtual hosting or VPS (site gets too big), but *not* necessarily the best choice to start a company with.

Here's a tip: If you want to start a trucking company, don't just buy the most inexpensive trucks. If you want to start a lawnmowing company, don't just buy the most inexpensive lawnmower. If you want to start a rug cleaning business, don't go to Target and buy a $60 rug steamer.

Likewise, if you are serious about starting a web hosting company (and few are serious I do realize), don't just buy the cheapest server because you can.

Chicken,

Well said.

Originally posted by Weberz
Chicken,

Well said.
And good luck with your 12,000th post!! Coming very soon.

I have to agree with the majority. I honestly can't see what you're complaining about! Your server died, FS went above and beyond to get your data back, but it couldn't be done. What is your complaint exactly? *sigh*

Originally posted by Chicken
New hdd's don't fail? Interesting. Can you also tell me what brand the hdd was from this post? The year it was made? How 'worn' it was? Maybe even today's winning lottery numbers?

Speculation only gets one so far...


Our data recovery team is able to see data on the drive and is in the process or seeing exactly what they are able to get off the drives. Unfortnately the problems we are running into are that we cannot find the exact IBM model of drive to replace the internal mechanics as they have disconitnued the drive.


Speculation?
I would think you would know better Chicken and read the post before replying.

Originally posted by blue27
Speculation?
I would think you would know better Chicken and read the post before replying.
Your quote proves the drive model is no longer currently manufactured. It does not prove the drive was either 'old' or 'worn' when it was installed.

I had to say that you are fortunate to have such good responsive support team from fastserver. As all agree, fastserver had did their best.

This is a matter of luck. Well, it is very very unlucky to have this kind of hardware failure happening to you. I sincerely wish you will continue to survive on.


Don't give up!

Originally posted by akuo
Your quote proves the drive model is no longer currently manufactured. It does not prove the drive was either 'old' or 'worn' when it was installed.
Thank you akuo.
Originally posted by blue27
Speculation?
I would think you would know better Chicken and read the post before replying.
I read the post before replying Blue27, but if you can somehow tell the drive was old or worn, more power to ya'. I don't have such abilities.
Originally posted by blue27
Speculation?
Speculation.

<edit>

Oppps. I read to much into things sometimes.

</edit>

Originally posted by Weberz
<edit>
Oppps. I read to much into things sometimes.
</edit>

<edit>
:) don't we all though! :beer:

</edit>

Hello:

It's been a couple of days since I visited the board and just saw this post. Just for the record, this issue consumed about 4 days of my time. 3 of our support staff members spent 3 solid days on this issue doing everything possible, I spent 16 hour days doing the best I could. In the end I brought in a data recovery team and ended up paying a good amount of money to assist.

Was this nessecary? No, FastServers.Net maintains no responsibility for DATA and I knew in advance by participating in this I was opening up the entire company to numerous liabilities. In the end I was not able to just let it go, the issue at hand actually had me very concerned and wanting to help out to the best of my abilities. I stuck my neck out on the line and did recieve verbal warnings from the Powers that be in regards to the amount of resources and time I put into helping Paul out.

We all know loosing data is probably one of the most frustrating situations in the industry and I have been through it time and again.

With that said, I am apologize for the loss of data and can honestly say that 110% of my energy and resources went into attempting recovery of this data.

Regards,
Aaron Phillips

Hmm... Seems like Fastservers is someone to look at now. I checked out their page and I see an option for free off-server backup. How long has that been an option?

I've lurked in WHT for years, just now posting. I have to agree that Fastservers (or at LEAST Aaron) went out of his way and went above the call of duty. Having any form of data on the net is at least risky, and not having that data backed up somewhere else is one of the easiest mistakes to make for hosts of any kind. Ultimately it seems asiahost should be mad at himself for not providing his customers the service that he expected from fastservers. CEO-Shawn from cyberwings learned that lesson too, at the expense of every one of his customers.

Don't bite the hand that pumps juice to your servers.

---------------
Crazy J

Free basic off-server backups have come with all servers since the beginning. We don't set them up unless the customer requests, and basic backups are limited to 500MB (enough to store vital configuration files, and not much else)

I find myself in agreement with Blue27. While we can't know with 100% certainty that the drives were old and worn, it seems a reasonable conclusion based upon the company's own statements. I do think that that Aaron went above and beyond the call of duty to try and fix this problem. But that is not to the point. The real question is what should this company have been doing to prevent this from happening in the first place? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps it was just bad luck. Sh*t happens. But I get the impression that it was not bad luck, just carelessness. It seems to me that there is plenty of blame to go around. Fastserves needs to do a better job in the equipment department. Having said that, back-up your own data! Personally, I wouldn't leave the back-up of really important data in the hands of someone else, if I could help it.

Daniel

Originally posted by worlddan
But I get the impression that it was not bad luck, just carelessness

What gives you that impression...? I've seen brand new drives fail like this before.

Originally posted by JP.
What gives you that impression...? I've seen brand new drives fail like this before.

Yeah, we don't know anything about the server he purchased / leased / whatever. It could've been a bottom of the line deal that was thrown together to give asiahost a box at a discount price... Or it could have been brand new server with harddrives that he supplied. I doubt we can assume anything at this point. We know Asiahost's dedicated server had harddrive crashes. He didn't have sufficient backups for his clients. Now he's mad at someone else for that?

We don't know what his deal was with Fastservers. We don't know why they used what drives they used. I think the ultimate point here is that Asiahost is mad at Fastservers for something he probably should've done proactively, instead of reactively: Saving and backing up his customers data.

Originally posted by steveoregon
I'm not an expert on Raid, but I am an electronic technician. Does a Raid configuration run off the same supply? Seems like each hard drive would run off two seperate supplies so there is total isolation between drives. Seems like there should also be two seperate controler cards to isolate each drive from the mother board.

Just thinking out loud how I would design it.

Steve

You get that in high-end servers.

Originally posted by ap_surge
Hello:

It's been a couple of days since I visited the board and just saw this post. Just for the record, this issue consumed about 4 days of my time. 3 of our support staff members spent 3 solid days on this issue doing everything possible, I spent 16 hour days doing the best I could. In the end I brought in a data recovery team and ended up paying a good amount of money to assist.

Was this nessecary? No, FastServers.Net maintains no responsibility for DATA and I knew in advance by participating in this I was opening up the entire company to numerous liabilities. In the end I was not able to just let it go, the issue at hand actually had me very concerned and wanting to help out to the best of my abilities. I stuck my neck out on the line and did recieve verbal warnings from the Powers that be in regards to the amount of resources and time I put into helping Paul out.

We all know loosing data is probably one of the most frustrating situations in the industry and I have been through it time and again.

With that said, I am apologize for the loss of data and can honestly say that 110% of my energy and resources went into attempting recovery of this data.

Regards,
Aaron Phillips

Aaron I just signed up with you guys over the weekend and the server should be on-line soon.. Feel free to watch over my server and provide me with this great service anytime :D


Data loss sucks, plain and simple but it is going to happen it just seems worse when it is your server that crashed. I do not know what kind of server asiahost was running, IDE or SCSI, single drive or Raid, back ups or not... oh wait that part I know and that sound like a no. Anyway.. IMHO if you are going to offer hosting for a fee you should protect your customers data at any cost. Some might not agree with me but running a "paid hosting" service you should run something that at least has a back up drive on it or rsync somewhere off the server to even a cheap raq somewhere. Your customers pay for the security that your server is going to be there tomorrow and the next day. How can a hosting company be run on a $99 server with no back ups or emergency plan? Spend the cash and get SCSI drives and a good server admin to make sure your files are being backed up to protect your rear-end and your customers websites.

I am sorry that you lost this data asiahost but I don't see it being FS fault unless you were paying them for backups and they did not do them. Pick up the pieces get everything back on line and help your customers get back on track. What does not kill you will make your company stronger and more wise for the next issue.\

I think we have all learned something from this.. Backups Backups Backups.... oh to those that did not get this.... Backup your servers.

My 2 cents

Robert