Google as BackUp - the last resort!

But Hey, it works

[musicales]

OK I did the ultimate webmaster boobie and managed to lose some files when my site went down. Thank God for Google cached pages - without them I wouldn't have had anything. Shame they don't save the images as well!!

[edited by: musicales at 5:25 pm (utc) on July 9, 2002]

[rcjordan]

>Shame they don't save the images as well!!

Have you cleared your history/temp files? There's a chance that the images might be there.

[amoore]

I actually wrote a script to find old pages of mine in google and strip out the stuff that google added in. A pretty convenient backup, indeed. (well, I had to re-write a bunch or CGIs and stuff).

I wonder if there's any market for that kind of script?

[EliteWeb]

oOooOooo thats scary, I had someone overwrite index.html on a site couz the FrontPage path was in the wrong directory, when I went to the site from my computer the cache was replaced. Good thing we had 10 million computers in the office. I just turned one on and took out the network cord, put it to work offline and snagged the images and everything ;)

[musicales]

amoore - I'll certainly have that script if you're offering. Let me guess, find all the <b style...> tags and chop them out, right?

rcjordan - thanks for the thought, unfortunately I had just reinstalled my entire machine at exactly the time the server went down (without backup). My next task after I got Windows back was to get a fresh copy of the site - but it had gone :( Ouch

[pageoneresults]

Depending how long the site has been live, you might be able to find backup at archive.org. If its the site in your profile, archive.org has one as late as 2001-11-17.

> Have you cleared your history/temp files?

I've been saved by that one quite a few times!

<edit>I just realized that the archive doesn't save many of the images either.

Another option is to check with your host. Our host backs up once a day and they keep a full 7 days history just in case.

[edited by: pageoneresults at 12:37 am (utc) on July 10, 2002]

[wasmith]

Last time i had lost web data i went the "work offline" route. But i find myself using the cache for other people's sites alot when they are having problems.

For what its worth they have reduced size images of the orginals pictures in their image search but you need to get good at the image algo to find them. Hint: use a unique url identifier.

[musicales]

pageoneresults - thanks for the idea! I'd forgotten about that site. It's not the one in my profile that went down. It did have the site, but only from Jan 2002 which is too far back. I don't think they keep the images there either strangely enough.