I have a dedicated server co-located at a hosting company that shall at this time remain nameless.

Last week I had a message on my answering machine from them telling me that one of the hard drives failed and they wanted to know if I wanted them to replace it. The system is a RAID-5 which supposedly mirrors the data in case one drive goes. When I called them back the tech told me he was already in the process of replacing the drive.
I told him I wished he wouldnt have done that as I would have backed up the data just in case since I had not done a backup in a few weeks. He said its RAID-5, you won't lose anything. Sure enough he lost EVERYTHING including the OS. I was furious and told them they better figure out a way to extract the files. Well they did, it took them 2 days and my sites/server was down for almost 3 days.

Now 2 days ago I get a bill for $3000 for labor!

Then to top it all off the next day after sending me the bill they send me an email telling me my credit card declined and my server will be deactivated within 12 hours, and this is a company I have been with for 3 years.


I feel they should not have done a thing without my consent, not to mention I purchased the machine from them and was told at the time I didnt have to worry about backups because of the RAID-5.

Am I wrong? I mean I know they did some work but this just seems out of line.

Whoa.
Not sure what to say except, unless:
1. Data became corrupt and then migrated to the other drives (unlikely, as you said it was a drive failure, not data corruption)
2. They messed up while rebuilding the array


Sounds like #2 - They shouldn't be charging you anything, rather apologizing for their mistake and hoping you'll still be a customer.

$3000 to replace a drive in a raid5 array... hmm, want to hire me? I only charge $1000!

Oh... I think it might be a good idea to post the actual company name here, think of it as a public service announcement.