Last night (6th September 2006) Fasthosts suffered a server failure and lost much of the data associated with my website.

I am not web hosting/design literate (someone created the site for me)...but have incurred significant expense on the site and its related advertising.

So, I was slightly distressed (to say the least) that they were unable to restore my website to a working condition.

I could understand losing some of the database (in fact the database appears to have been fully restored minus the photos attached to 2006 user profiles) but I can't understand why some web pages have been lost. (I haven't changed or added any content within the previous month or two.)

I guess I'm asking two questions:
(a) How could only certain parts of the site be lost?
(b) Is it reasonable for me to expect a hosting provider to restore a website to a working condition following the loss of one of their servers?

Many thanks in advance
Glenn

In response to your two questions:

(a) How could only certain parts of the site be lost?

This is highly possible if the backup they restored for you is way way back the current state when the servers go down. Its highly possiible that these are new pages you uploaded recently and if their backups are say one month ago, it would be lost upon restoration.

(b) Is it reasonable for me to expect a hosting provider to restore a website to a working condition following the loss of one of their servers?

If they say in their terms of service (TOS) that they are responsible for restoring your website upon server crashes, then you can expect that. But looking at most TOS of hosting companies nowadays will tell you that you, as webmaster is responsible for your own hosting backup. If thats the case, the host can get back to you and say you shoulld have kept your own.

These are lessons to learn in being a webmaster. Always remember to backup your websites like you are brushing your teeth. Its one webmaster job you cannot simply miss amidst adversities with your webhost.

Hope this helps. Cheers!

I experienced the same situation in the past when the server hard drive corrupted. It will take some time to restore the hard drive to the last minute of the crash considering huge amount of files in it.

All you can do is to be more patient and hope that their tech support will do their best. At this point, submitting support ticket multiple times won't make a difference.

Good luck. I hope you can get all the files back soon.

Check out their TOS if it says you the webmaster are responisble for website backups then your just out of luck for the most part. I always keep 3 copies of my site

1. One live on the server
2. Another on my desktop for working with
3. Another on a second hard drive on my PC which is backed up weekly.

Now that's what I call REAL BACKUP!

hi Glenn,following are the questions that you had asked -
(a) How could only certain parts of the site be lost?
ans. Let me create a situation,there is always droplet left in the glass of beer. It is possible to loose certain parts but its the companies responsibility to take care of back-ups/database.

(b) Is it reasonable for me to expect a hosting provider to restore a website to a working condition following the loss of one of their servers?
ans. Yes, they are completely responsible for such a act and they will have to compensate the loss in one or other.

Well, you can contact me if you need any kind of tech. help, these answers were written in general.

cheers

Try contacting them and see what they say!