Freepages-Help-L Archives

Archiver > Freepages-Help > 2002-06 > 1025370155


From: "Robin W. Moore" <>
Subject: Re: [FreeHelp] What happened to my pages??!!!!!!!!!!!!
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 10:02:35 -0700 (PDT)


[I'll post a copy of this message to Sherri Stone on the Message Board
when it comes back up]
=====
Betsy Mills of RootsWeb wrote:
The Freepages server is back online. Unfortunately, the move took
longer than expected due to experiencing a few hardware problems during
the move. It appears that a hard drive was failing in the old server
and wasn't discovered until it was taken offline for the move. That
hard drive failed completely and so the accounts on that hard drive had
to be restored from backup. However, the failing hard drive may have
caused the backups not to completely backup. This means that account
names (userids) beginning with s, t, u, v, and w will not have restored
completely and data will have been lost possibly as far back as
December 2001. The good news is that staff has managed to resurrect the
old hard drive and is going to attempt to restore the missing data. If
your account is one of the ones that was only partially restored,
please hold off on uploading new files until staff can determine if we
can recover what was lost. We apologize for this inconvenience and
appreciate your patience and understanding.
=====
Sherri -

If I'm reading Betsy's message correctly (and I'm a government computer
systems/server administrator with over 30 years in the business), your
site was probably one of the ones that had to be "restored" from
RootsWeb's backup tapes. What that means is: Whenever you've made a
change to any of your files at your FreePages site, RootsWeb's server
has automatically placed a copy of the new/modified file on the nightly
server backup tape. Then, if a hard disk goes bad on the server (and it
appears one disk was not signalling that it had problems), the (human)
RootsWeb server administrator goes back to the oldest reasonable backup
tape (in RootsWeb's case, they go back about six months) and copies the
files for the affected section of the disk out to the new/repaired
disk. Then they go to the next oldest backup tape and do the same
thing. And so on until they've gone through all the backup tapes. What
you'll normally end up seeing on your site when all of this is done is
the most recent copy of all your files--as long as that copy wasn't so
new that it didn't make it onto the nightly backup tape--PLUS any
files/directories you deleted without reusing the file/directory name
for replacement files or directories. If you've reorganized your site
within the last six months, the extra old deleted files and directories
can look messy in FreePages' File Manager, but all your current links
will connect to the latest copy of each file.

Betsy also said that "the failing hard drive may have caused the
backups not to completely backup", but that the "staff has managed to
resurrect the old hard drive and is going to attempt to restore the
missing data". Let's cross our fingers that they can get to those
files, which are the files at the point that the server was switched
offline for the changeover to the new server equipment.

Unlike some bad experiences I've had with companies who changed to new
management or new servers (the bankruptcy of @Home, and the loss of all
my email when @Excite changed management, come immediately to mind),
the folks at RootsWeb go out of their way to try to save and rescue all
of our work--for which we pay them nothing in return (except our
heartfelt thanks when we realize the hurdles they go through).

My advice is to sit tight until Betsy comes back with the final
verdict. Hopefully it's a good one.

I hope this is of some help and comfort to you.

The rED..oO ROBBYN (owned & operated by Robin Willingham Moore)

Homepage: http://www.moorecrossing.com/ a.k.a.
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~moorecrossing/
Web Editing & Genealogy Toolbox: http://freepages.computers.rootsweb.com/~moorecrossing/

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