if your webserver died taking everyone's data with it?

Last friday my webserver went down, so I emailed the company I rent my server from. They told me my 2nd HD died (one I use for backups) and that they would replace it.
They put an 8gb HD in instead of a 40gb HD and it never resynced (I am using Cpanel) the backup across to it AFAIK. Sunday morning at 00:30 GMT my webserver goes offline again. I contact the host and a few hours later they tell me they will look into it and get it up asap.

36 hours after his email reply and no other replied from him that I sent him, he finally emails me saying the main HD is dead now.

Is this just bad luck - or is something fishy going on? I am very upset/distraught over this. That server had over 60+ domains on it - some people I have been hosting for over 2 years. Online gaming community sites I was hosting - and their leagues were meant to start this week!
Paying clients - everything lost!

I am on the verge of breaking down. What I thought was a usable backup solution without spending loads on a tape backup (which I found extremely unreliable) was wiped out in one foul swoop :(

I have emailed all my clients and offered them refunds on their last payment. I am not a huge host... far from it. I just wish I could offer them more or apologise more.

I just don't know what to do now. I tried putting a lot of effort into hosting people and giving them good support - and now this. I am so close to just packing it all in and letting the Big Boys do it from now on, after all they would do things better than me :(

--James

I would probably break down, but while doing that, be on the phone constantly with the company to try and figure out what happened. Having 2 harddrives go out within 48 hours of each other sounds pretty odd, but since the data is lost, I'm not sure what good could come out of doing anything (unless you felt a lawsuit was in order and you had justification).

:(

*logs into FTP and manually backs up client's sites*

Wow, that's pretty messed up!

:angry:

:sickface:

I can think of no words better than the smilies provide for me

is this a server you lease from them ? or do you own and colo it
And when the 1st drive failed did they check volts and specs because 2 hardrives that quick says to me its a voltage problem after the 1st one went down that is somethign that should have been looked at. You are right to almost be breaking down and that the replacement drive was replaced with an 8 gig instead of a 40 would have me livid sounds like you need to be getting some credit to and not just your clients

=( sorry to hear about this

We as hosts are going to have to start looking very seriously at backup/mirroring solutions should a whole box go down like that.

sorry to hear this.

Is there nothing they can do to restore the sites, at all?

That is really tough.. but how did 2 servers go down? May I ask where you were renting the servers from? Or where you co-lo?

Yikes

Sounds awfully fishy that two drives go down like that.

Hi,

Yes it is a leased server with them - I pay them $xxx.xx a month. I have been looking at their TOS and they have clauses in it basically saying "we are not to be held responsible if anything happens to your data on our servers" etc

As I said, the company said they are going to try to retrieve the data on the HD's but whether they do actually try or not is another thing :/
Data recovery specialists cost money, and I doubt the company I lease the server with will actually pay for it to be done.

James

James,

Could you please PM the company name. I wonder if it's the same crooks that we had to deal with in the past.


TY

I think most people will know who I am talking about - just do a search for posts made by me ;)

After a good nights sleep (boy I slept like a log) and dreaming about the end of the world (no joke, I did dream that!), I am feeling a bit better.

I am still peed off the guy thought I was gonna backup the data off the server (he told me the main HD was fine and I would be moved to another box) - but I cannot back it up as I am only on 64K ISDN :/ Backing up several gigs of data would take more than 24-48 hours!

I personally feel that if he knew the HD was going out, he would have set up a brand new server for me, then copied the data from the old one to the new one then turned it back online.

Whatever it is, it's done :/

--James

Have you tried recovering the data? It will most probably be in 1 million little pieces but its worth a try.

The company I lease my server from said he is going to try to recover the data - but he failed to recover the data on the other HD, so I daresay he will fail to recover the data on this one.
It's too easy for them to just say "looks like all data was lost" rather than spend hours/money on restoring it :/

James

I feel 90% sure this is a power problem. Ask them to check the power supply. In other words: new drives in same system without checking power = same problem again.

James,

As I mentioned on ICQ, I would move to a better host.

We had a problem with the very same provider around December / January, foresaw that more problems would pop-up, so we jumped ship - and I must say I am very glad we did.

My advice would be to go to a reputable company that has been around for a while, may be pay higher monthly fees, but at least be able to sleep at night.

Whilst the providers we use certainly aren't the cheapest, I know that they all have some problems inevitably, but on the whole they are good, and it gives you much more peace of mind.

Matt

Hi again,

Well, after not hearing anything from the host in another 24hours, I emailed them to tell them to cancel my contract with them and to NOT bill me again. Three days the server was offline - no indication of when it would be back online. Barely any contact from the host letting me know what is going on.

Even when I sent the cancellation email to them, they never replied to it saying "Sorry for all that has happened" kinda thing - they never even acknowledged receiving it... but they had as I have been removed from their Ubersmith software.

Oh well, the company who I was with was, as you probably know, ServerHost/PlusWeb/ColoRackSpace. No doubt Jeff will see this thread and make up some rubbish to try to put the blame away from him :/

--James

James, you are very calm, astonishing, I am sure I would be very mad.

Hi Walter,

I was extremely angry when I was told the main HD was dead... very upset to. Felt like my whole world crashed around me. I am far from a big webhost, but the clients I was pulling in I looked after them well - kinda knew them on 1st name basis - so when this happened, I felt I let them down in the worst way possible.

Jeffrey emailed me today and apologised (not had a chance to reply to him yet - will do when I get home) - shame there was no compensation mentioned.
Both HD's lost their entire contents of the HD and were unrecoverable. Apparently the PSU was faulty and spiked the HDs :/

As for me being remarkably calm - no point getting even more stressed out - what is done is done and I can only learn from this in the attempt I can stop this happening in future.

James