When everything explodes... what is next?

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5 comments, last by frob 7 months, 4 weeks ago

About two weeks ago, everything went sideways around here. Part of that was that after FINALLY getting our domain back from the previous webhost, who was getting a tad scammy, we were meant to upload backups that they had deleted, to the new host. Then everything died and I realized that this meant both working and backup files were gone. Six months of files wiped out at a vulnerable moment.

We're recovering, seeking out older backups and such, but it looks like a complete reset is likely, I am already reconstructing a ton of things and new hardware should arrive within a week (doing my work on a phone is just so… teenage-y). Spilled milk, no crying, make lemonade back on the horse etc.

I am just spreading the story in hopes of reading stories from others who have had similar near-complete wipeouts. For ideas, inspiration, comfort, and such. Did you ever lose all files? Why, and what did you do?!

[DEDACTED FOR SECURITY REASONS]

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Embassy of Time said:
Did you ever lose all files? Why, and what did you do?!

Maybe 10 years ago, a hacker infected every file on my website. I don't remember the details, but I was able to reconstruct the site from my local copy.

-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com

I've lost a month worth of work back then. Spare time stuff, just a hobby. It still hurt. I'm afraid I can't match or imagine how tough it must be to lose so much serious work. If you're not using a repository for your website source, it is a really good idea to do so. For the same reasons that version control is normally a wise choice.

Embassy of Time said:
Did you ever lose all files? Why, and what did you do?!

Yup, that happened to me as well.

Was upgrading my system with my data on an unmounted disk (was 1G at a time where normal computers had around 250MB hard disks, and 1.44MB floppies,, ie no way to make an offline copy).

Everything was going fine until the system announced “he, you're running low on memory, I'll use your spare disk." :(

Luckily, a lot of the data was just archive I could download again.

All that I created at the system was lost. Luckily I was mostly experimenting with the system, and the real important part was knowledge from the experiments how the system worked, safely stored in my head 🙂

Always good to not feel alone with a problem, thanks! For some detail, we had both local and remote backups, both of which failed. We have triple security on some files, but not all, and access is a bit of a problem right now, but someone is working on it. The big reset was kind of an opportunity to force a cleanup, so not 100% a bad thing. Still… ouch….

[DEDACTED FOR SECURITY REASONS]

Yeah, it sucks. I've had drives fail, viruses strike, and I anticipate the day ransomware will encrypt everything.

The saying is: There are two types of people, those who back up everything, and those who haven't yet lost everything.

The 3-2-1 rule is still very important, even for personal stuff like my decades of photos. At least 3 copies, at least 2 types of media, at least 1 off site. D2D2T systems are widely available and cheaper than recovery, and using online archives rather than tape is only slightly more expensive. At least one copy needs to be disconnected, such as cases for ransomware encrypting everything that is connected. Also, periodically verify you can recover everything from your backups.

It's odd that both your local and remote backups failed. That's rough to be sure, and something you will likely have learned to verify in the future. :-/

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