PLEASE help they said my harddrive was dead on my

dedicated server, what can I do

[zeus]

I have no backup, but it must be possible get it to work its my whole life, my income.

zeus

[DaveAtIFG]

Try this [google.com].

[Chndru]

Just to soothe your nerves, try htt*://www.drivesavers.com/museum/museuma.html

[jim_w]

Back in the 80’s we had a Seagate repair depot near us and knew a couple of people that worked there. One person left and started a recovery service. What he would do was…

Hard drive has 2 parts. The mechanical part, platter heads, etc. and the electrical part, the board on top of the platter. Most of the time the failure was not the platter, but the electronics on the board. He would take drives that had good electronics and marry them with the platter of the drive that stopped working. More times than not, it fixed the problem.

Now I’m not suggesting that you purchase a new drive, of the same brand and model, and swap the components, especially if you are not qualified, but you could look into someone else doing it, or looking for a specific service to do that. It would be much cheaper in labor than doing a bit wise recovery. It depends on how much the data is worth.

I won’t say always make a back-up for I have been in you position before and I was real religious about back-ups for about a year. Now I just copy directories around and distribute them evenly between my 5 hard drives with 5 different mechanical parts and 5 different electrical parts whenever I make a major change to code.

[zeus]

I just contact drivesavers and they will do the job, damn Im shaking all over, but thanks every one.

zeus

[jim_w]

Hey zeus, how much, (in money), if you don't mind me asking?

[worker]

I don't know how large your site is, and how often it is updated, but you might want to start opening up the cached files on Google for each page, and copying them.

If you have a site with a few hundred pages, you could hire some college kid to find and copy every page, while the cache is still accessible.

[zeus]

It will cost about 2000$ to fix if they can, I sure hope so. Now Im wondering if at the right dedicated server because they said the harddrive is so thats it, they diddent offer me some kind of possible solution, I even told them it was my main income, but what do i get for 100-150$ a month and it has to have 500GB Bandwidth.

zeus

Hmm nice Idea about finding my sites on Google, but its over 1800 sites

[bcolflesh]

Next time - mirrored raid.

[jim_w]

>>1800 sites <<

Holy Cow! Type, type, type… In theory, you could use scanner and OCR software. In theory.

2k wow. Not bad if they have to do a bit recovery, but if they just swap parts, you are getting had.

>>I even told them it was my main income<<

Oh no. Never tell them that. Just say, ‘OK, let me call a couple of other places to get a price. ‘ and then see if they say more. You can always call them back.

[amznVibe]

I know this thought is of no help, but I can't imagine 1800 sites without a backup system? Even a 2nd hard drive to copy the image over weekly costs $200 or less for the largest sizes.

Still though I can't recall the last hard drive failure I have had in the past few years, drives are much more reliable now. I take it you completely trust them that this is a mechanical failure and not a virus, clobbered fat tables, etc.

Is it a linux/apache system or IIs?

[zeus]

Yes I know the backup thing, but I diddent know that much about the new dedicated server.

It is a linux

Now here is the real killer, today I got a offer for that site which is down, a GOOD offer and then this happens.

P.s I dont think I can slep until this is finished.

zeus

[plumsauce]

In the future, you might consider never directly
editing site files on the server. Have a machine
in the office(living room) that acts as a test and
staging server. Anything on the live box is transferred
from the staging server. This is backup number one.
Backup number two is a cd or tape that you never
leave the office without.

[zeus]

Here is a update I got my harddisc back on DVD and it seems that they have saved the most of the harddrive, so that realy great news.

I also saw on Google that even if they have only indexed half the site now, I still keep the rankings, so thats also great and it show that you dont have to make a huge site to have a good ranking.

The visits went down from 37000 unique a day to about 20000 unique, but I think thats because of the missing sites.

the price for the drive save was about 2000$.

have a great New Year

zeus