Finally!
My email is back up and so is my website.
The Damage:
2.5 days of email lost
All my themes, files, customizations, etc. to WordPad lost
All my uploaded files lost (most I have been able to resurrect or have backups)
I have no confidence in my hosting company
The Silver Lining:
No blog posts or comments lost (the one backup they could get was my WordPad DB)
I am redesigning the look of my blog
Here is the company's explanation:
During the transfer of the server that hosts your account, we experienced a major hardware failure of the main hard disks as well as of some of the hard disks storing account backups. Unfortunately, the backup hard disk containing your account was among the damaged ones.
Our most experienced system administrators worked extremely hard together with the data center head manager to recover data from the broken disks. Despite all their efforts, most probably we will not be able to recover any data from those disks. Our administrators will keep trying until we exhaust the last possible resource to bring your website back online. So far only the databases have been recovered.
The SiteGround Terms of Use include a provision according to which we must compensate you as a customer for any downtime of your website. This compensation is limited to the fees you have paid for the time your website was down. In this particular case, the downtime was caused by circumstances beyond anyone’s control. Hardware failures cannot be predicted. Yet, we certainly hoped to avoid situations as the current one by migrating your account to new and better hardware.
We feel really bad when both our customers and we have to suffer losses due to circumstances beyond our control, such as hard disk failures. That is why, we would like to do our best not only in trying to repair the damage of the hardware failure, but also in compensating you for the downtime. If you would like to keep your account with us, we will offer you one year of free hosting services. This is our way to say thank you for sticking to us even in the hardest moments. If you decide to move your account away, though, we will respect your decision and will issue a refund on the unused months of pre-paid service.
The problem with this explanation is that it is bogus. Hard drive failures are common and that is why any responsible company has mechanisms to compensate including RAID, mirrors and multiple backup sites. The fact that SiteGround did not take these precautions is deeply concerning. I have not decided what I am going to do, find get a refund and find a new host or take the free year. The whole experience is disappointing. It may be a little while before the blog is exactly as I want it but it is up right now. I can also receive email. If you sent anything to me over the last 3 days, please resend it as I probably did not get it. Thanks.
The Damage:
2.5 days of email lost
All my themes, files, customizations, etc. to WordPad lost
All my uploaded files lost (most I have been able to resurrect or have backups)
I have no confidence in my hosting company
The Silver Lining:
No blog posts or comments lost (the one backup they could get was my WordPad DB)
I am redesigning the look of my blog
Here is the company's explanation:
During the transfer of the server that hosts your account, we experienced a major hardware failure of the main hard disks as well as of some of the hard disks storing account backups. Unfortunately, the backup hard disk containing your account was among the damaged ones.
Our most experienced system administrators worked extremely hard together with the data center head manager to recover data from the broken disks. Despite all their efforts, most probably we will not be able to recover any data from those disks. Our administrators will keep trying until we exhaust the last possible resource to bring your website back online. So far only the databases have been recovered.
The SiteGround Terms of Use include a provision according to which we must compensate you as a customer for any downtime of your website. This compensation is limited to the fees you have paid for the time your website was down. In this particular case, the downtime was caused by circumstances beyond anyone’s control. Hardware failures cannot be predicted. Yet, we certainly hoped to avoid situations as the current one by migrating your account to new and better hardware.
We feel really bad when both our customers and we have to suffer losses due to circumstances beyond our control, such as hard disk failures. That is why, we would like to do our best not only in trying to repair the damage of the hardware failure, but also in compensating you for the downtime. If you would like to keep your account with us, we will offer you one year of free hosting services. This is our way to say thank you for sticking to us even in the hardest moments. If you decide to move your account away, though, we will respect your decision and will issue a refund on the unused months of pre-paid service.
The problem with this explanation is that it is bogus. Hard drive failures are common and that is why any responsible company has mechanisms to compensate including RAID, mirrors and multiple backup sites. The fact that SiteGround did not take these precautions is deeply concerning. I have not decided what I am going to do, find get a refund and find a new host or take the free year. The whole experience is disappointing. It may be a little while before the blog is exactly as I want it but it is up right now. I can also receive email. If you sent anything to me over the last 3 days, please resend it as I probably did not get it. Thanks.