Still no data

[Tom Cross]

Hi folks,

I made the foolish decision to opt for an auto-magic migration to TxD2, encouraged by the "we promise nobody will lose anything". Fast forward almost a year and I have a new account with nothing on it, to which I have never been given the password, and still no access to any of the data from my original account. I have tried and tried to get a response from anyone and it's just a brick wall. Zero answer from support tickets or email. At this point I don't know whether to write off my data and start over somewhere else, or be persistent and try to get an answer out of them! Any advice that anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated as I'm really beyond furious with the way things have been handled and I just want to move on, but can't bring myself to give up on my lost data.

Cheers,

Tom

[kmsd]

Sorry for the troubles, Tom. I can't really tell if this is a real company or not. I have access to my space but anything I put on there I kind of treat as if could go away at anytime so I keep constant backups of it. I don't have any critical production sites but if I did I can see frustration here. Especially not having your data. 

[Andrew Kember]

Hi Tom,

Likewise, I don't have a deep insight into the new Textdrive themselves. As far as I understand it, despite huge improvements in the ability to automatically deploy and maintain server technology at scale (e.g. using Opscode Chef), the complex customer service needs of the business do not scale in the same way. 

As I don't have any inside information, my advice is likely to be a bit more general than you might like. I may also be 'preaching to the choir' so to speak, so please forgive me if I point out things that are obvious to you. 

The question of sticking with Textdrive or moving elsewhere is answered by understanding the impact of the service disruption. If you are using this service to run a business, then Textdrive might not yet be the strong foundation you need. I would, for the time being, continue as if your data is lost. In the event that you do eventually get some of it back, then that is a bonus. If you do hold out for retrieving the data, then set yourself a deadline for moving on. A lot of customers have variations on this story. I was in a similar situation to you, but did manage to retrieve my data. It's worth a post on http://discuss.textdrive.com/ to see if other people who were on the same server as you have had access to their data. 

Regardless of where you decide to host, I suggest you make the time and effort to set up automated backups of the data, where you own the backups and store them on a separate system (Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier are great for this). Once your hosting is in place and you have your backups running, I suggest a full practice of disaster recovery. 

Get a free trial on another web hosting provider, or set aside $15 for a month's hosting and re-build your sites from backup on this test account. Once you've done this, you can cancel your test account, safe in the knowledge that if this ever happens to you again, you can jump ship with a minimum of hassle, and have... er... set sail again with a few hours' work. This will pay dividends in the future, in terms of time, money, and stress. You won't need to feel the same level of resentment you feel now, as moving hosting provider won't be such a traumatic event. 

It goes without saying that this advice doesn't shift responsibility for the Textdrive mess onto you. I simply advocate taking responsibility for your data in future, because you're the person most highly motivated to look after it properly. 

In conclusion, I hope this doesn't come across as too preachy. 

1. Decide where to host
2. Set up what you have there
3. Set up backups
4. Test the backups, and your skills at using them
5. Continue to ask for your original data, if it's still valuable to you

It's cold comfort, but I hope you find some benefit in this advice.

Kind regards,

Andrew.

[Tom Cross]

Thanks guys, I'm really kicking myself for not getting on top of backups when we were on Joyent. At this point I'm not bothered about the free hosting, I just want my data and to move on to pastures new (with a rock solid backup plan this time!). I will also continue to push for disclosure on what happened to the backups that we were assured existed!

[Walter Piovesan]

Tom for what it's worth, I am pretty sure all the old web servers have been backups up on strongspace. i.e. I don't believe the data has been lost.

How to get it back is not something that i have any knowledge of.  Probably best to File a support ticket.

Best of luck.