Blank Forums / Posts Missing?

[kirstym]

An easy way to backup your own posts is to go to your profile and use the "View Latest Posts" feature. You can type in a number up to 1,000 and then when the page loads just right click / save. This will save all your posts to one file.

Patrick

Thanks Patrick, but I was meaning the whole forum, as I am the administrator. Is there a way I can do that?

[VS Admin]

Jul 27, 2010 4:38:03 GMT -8 kirstym said:

An easy way to backup your own posts is to go to your profile and use the "View Latest Posts" feature. You can type in a number up to 1,000 and then when the page loads just right click / save. This will save all your posts to one file.

Patrick

Thanks Patrick, but I was meaning the whole forum, as I am the administrator. Is there a way I can do that?

We don't have an option to backup the entire forum, but using a similar method to what I just said you can backup the last 1,000 posts. Just go to the Search page, type in 999 days and 1000 posts, hit search and all of your latest 1,000 posts will show up.

Patrick

[kirstym]

OK, thanks very much

[VS Admin]

Jul 27, 2010 4:41:57 GMT -8 kirstym said:

OK, thanks very much

No problem

[bynbynbyn]

I have posts showing up from end of June when yesterday we had no posts...and our smilies have resorted back to the old ones before we changed them a few weeks ago and a Hidden Thread board we made is gone. Any clue if we will get those items back or not?
Thanks!

[VS Admin]

Jul 27, 2010 4:47:14 GMT -8 bynbynbyn said:

I have posts showing up from end of June when yesterday we had no posts...and our smilies have resorted back to the old ones before we changed them a few weeks ago and a Hidden Thread board we made is gone. Any clue if we will get those items back or not?
Thanks!

Unfortunately we were not able to recover any data from the drive itself, it decided to absolutely die on us so we are restoring from the latest available backup.

[tish1]

sorry to be a pain but is that it for my forum im not going to get the last few weeks n new members back thanks


dragonseggsclickn.proboards.com/index.cgi

[bynbynbyn]

Gottcha thanks for the info!

[Michael]

Jul 27, 2010 4:49:15 GMT -8 tish1 said:

sorry to be a pain but is that it for my forum im not going to get the last few weeks n new members back thanks


dragonseggsclickn.proboards.com/index.cgi

If your forum was offline, and is now online, then yes. You won't receive anything more.

[Martyn Dale]

Probably the penultimate update:

We are now into the W's

[VS Admin]

All active forums from the affected hard drive have now been restored from their latest backup.

[aemetro21]

You would think from how big your site is you could have better hard drives than what you have. If they only update every 30 days then that is a cheap butt hard drive. I lost everything on the site I was on. I have been using ProBoards for 5 years now and yeah. There should have been signs that the hard drive was failing even before midnight. It just doesn't just hit at once and go down.

[ljh]

I've never bothered to register on here before (just read the updates when needed) but a few of the comments on this thread have got my back up engough that I'd like to make a few points. Clearly the Admin are too polite to their (non-paying) customers to explain these things, so:

(1) Hardware fails. It's a fact of using computers.

(2) Hardware sometimes fails completely without warning. That's also a fact of the technology.

(3) Because hardware sometimes fails without warning, the only way to protect important data is to make regular backups. Preferably in three generations if the data really is that important.

(4) If data that you keep on a remote server is so important that you can't afford to lose any then there are two realistic options:

(a) Perform backups yourself as often as you deem necessary.
(b) Use a service which guarantees you will never lose data. That is not going to be a free service like Proboards!

I have no idea how many fora Proboards currently hosts, or how active those fora are, but I do know a little about large system programming. For anyone who claims to "take better care" of data on their home PC, I'd suggest you take a look at what's involved in massively concurrent and distributed systems management before you try to compare them with a box sitting on your desktop. You may as well compare a pushbike with a Bugatti Veyron - they're both forms of transport and they both have wheels but that's about all the similarity there is!

Seriously, guys, losing posts from a forum is annoying but, if those posts are crucial to whatever project they're part of, then the owner of the project really should understand the importance of keeping data backed up themselves. If you don't then you're in no position at all to criticise people running a generally reliable (and free to use!!!) system of this size!

Incidentally, the frequency of backupshas nothing to do with the "cheapness" of the hard drive. And yes, like any other machine, it can "just hit at once and go down".

*** Rant over ***


*** edited to add: For Admin - perhaps including a facility for individual forum administrators to extract their forum database tables and save locally might be a useful update? Of course, no-one would actually use such a facility until it was too late...... ***

[• Ambrose •]

Hello.

landofriiga.proboards.com/ may need to be restored, it's missing a few posts and a couple of members. Not sure if it has been restored yet, hopefully it hasn't and that we could have the posts back. Last post made was at least two weeks ago, =/.

[Misspresh]

I'm absolutely sorry to say but being as my forum is one of those forums that has been effected, and is now sitting with a month missing from my forum, I am absolutely disgusted to discover that the last backup completed was on the first of July. Considering I have background knowledge on how servers work, and how hosting companies work, it's awful to see that backups aren't completed at least once a week. No they don't all have to be completed all at the same time, but at a more sensible rotating rota.

Previous comments about hard-drives just failing without knowledge is absolutely rubbish, there are signs no matter what, all three previous hard-drive failures of mine gave errors no matter what, though granted to the untrained eye they would have been dismissed.

Whomever Probards has recruited to host their services are unprofessional. There has been nothing but problems since the recent server change, and I'm surprised that service has remained with them. This is assuming of course that do have a recruited host.

If this had been a company that makes a lot of money via their company, this would be enough to cause bankruptcy.