Backups? what's that..

A while ago someone wrote about "Please make backups now!" , don't remember who exactly, but I want to add this short story, and PLEASE read the last line.

I got one server in the USA (As I live in Europe, that's important) with VRT Servers (www.vrtservers.net). So far: great service. but then I went on holiday, and my credit card expired (I should have known, they print the date on that card...) so payments where not made. They keep emailing me (but I was on holiday, and that means: no phone,no laptop,no internet or my girlfriend goes alone so I missed out on all those great emails they sent me.

a few days later, Already back, I read my mail, delete 5000 unimportant ones (So I think)... and today: server unreachable. first guess: server got hacked/hijakced.

I call them to help me out. "What's your IP address?". I say 205.*.*.* and "Oioh, yeah, some problem with payements...". well nor worries, I got another CC, so I give it to them. server will be up in a few minutes.

I wait ... nothing .. check mail: "Oh, we formatted your first hard drive, do you still want us to charge your credit card?" ... That's 3 hours since the server went down!!!! Who the F**K (I got a thread about this) formats a hard drive within 3 hours when a client does not pay!!!??? well.. ok. I have 2 drives in that machine, 1 running, and the second just for backups.... I can live with a 1 week old backup .... So please, reinstall everything so I can see what's up..

they do. I get another email: "Good news! Your primary harddrive wasn't formatted!! oh and bad news: your second one was".

Ok, it's way past midnight now, I wake up my girlfriend (Again) .. New OS on the primary one, all data seems to be ok, restored all configs/tools and stuff is running agian (done from 01:00 to 07:00 local time).



If you skipped the text above: I was lucky, main data (apache tree/mysql) was not removed, My sites (including client sites) are back up, but beware: a server that is not physicly near you can do strange things! Make full (! not just html files, EVERYTHING) backups of what you've got. burn it on CD or whatever, you will life longer!

FYI:
* I always make local backups on a different drive,
* I always make remote backups
* I am a Tauren since this post, not sure what it means, will look it up tomorrow
but: they are always too old when you need them!

 

yeh backups are crucial, like the other day my harddrive decided to play up so i had to format it, i had no time to back up anything that was on it so i lost everything on it all files/backups to both mine and clients sites along with otherstuff, but luckily i had backups made on my external harddrive, and on the website itself.

Too many times ive been victim of not backing up, its something you think will never happen but it does.

 

It's really good to have a backup drive on your server, even better if you take it offline. Security problems, hosting problems, hardware problems or something are inevitable.

I've fallen victim to this before too.