I Lost (Almost) Everything - WickedFire - Affiliate Marketing Forum

trigatch4 · 02-02-2008, 02:56 PM

Hey guys... last week my web server crashed, the hard drive failed and backups were corrupted. I lost everything I've done on every website since I made Internet Marketing my Full-Time job.

I want to remind everyone to put their own backup systems in place... don't put it off... you WILL regret it. Posted my story to my blog and hope you can learn from my mistakes instead of your own.

My forums now appear dead and if anyone is interested in college basketball, politics or cooking I would be elated for you to come hang out at Bracketball - Powered by vBulletin, Political Fury - Political News & Discussion - Powered by vBulletin or ChefClub.net - Cooking & Recipe Community.

For anyone else dealing with tough times: take a breath of fresh air, a short break, keep your head up and get back to kicking ass... things could always be worse.

ChrisS · 02-02-2008, 03:14 PM

Holy shit...Did you have any other backups?

What are you going to do now?

kamesh · 02-02-2008, 03:34 PM

sounds really bad. I thought things were sorted out since its been almost two weeks back that you have told me abt your server crash.

abednego · 02-02-2008, 04:15 PM

I've had a similar issue in the past. Never thought I would ever have to backup until then. It's worth it if you're in it for the long run. Also, many hosting companies provide backup services for no additional charge. Even on dedicated servers. Good luck man.

gopher · 02-02-2008, 04:55 PM

Damn man, sorry to hear that. I had something similar happen to me in March of last year, my hard drive just died and they couldn't recover it. All of my local AM work was lost, fortunately not the parts that I kept online. Ever since I've been dumping my complete hard drive with SuperDuper! and I also recently started doing hourly backups with time machine to another external hard drive. Backing it up online will have to wait until I move to my new place and get proper Internet ..

But I didn't really think about backing up my online data, will definitely have to put something in place, something happening to that would cripple my business. So thanks for reminding me.

leihen · 02-02-2008, 05:13 PM

sounds bad.anybody have good idea?

seocracy · 02-02-2008, 05:19 PM

esp. after all those great promo movies.

that sucks big time bud

tombo100 · 02-02-2008, 05:28 PM

I had the same thing happen to me with a community of 5,000. I even flew down to Miami to the hosting office to get the hard drive and try to restore it myself. No luck and it was not worth paying a service to restore it all.

Keep your chin up and I hope you are feeling better.

Jon · 02-02-2008, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by trigatch4

Hey guys... last week my web server crashed, the hard drive failed and backups were corrupted. I lost everything I've done on every website since I made Internet Marketing my Full-Time job.

I want to remind everyone to put their own backup systems in place... don't put it off... you WILL regret it. Posted my story to my blog and hope you can learn from my mistakes instead of your own.

My forums now appear dead and if anyone is interested in college basketball, politics or cooking I would be elated for you to come hang out at Bracketball - Powered by vBulletin, Political Fury - Political News & Discussion - Powered by vBulletin or ChefClub.net - Cooking & Recipe Community.

For anyone else dealing with tough times: take a breath of fresh air, a short break, keep your head up and get back to kicking ass... things could always be worse.

This is why people in our industry smoke so many damn cigarettes!!! Now do you understand... Mom??

adamx12m · 02-02-2008, 08:22 PM

HD failures just plain suck. I lost a drive last month and even though I had backups going but for some reason they weren't fully working as I thought. Even though I didn't lose everything even a day's worth of data loss is a huge waste of time considering how cheap storage is vs. your time. Everything from now on is raid 5 or backed up some how. I don't trust dvd's and now i'm back to looking at DLT tapes.

Another tip, even if you have backups you should really try once in a while restoring the data just to make sure they really work and how to do it. If it's really critical you should have multiple copies as a strategy. Good luck going forward...

IronLogik · 02-02-2008, 08:27 PM

sorry to hear about the data loss - that's my nightmare. a little late now, but maybe useful still (for people with linux servers):

Backups using rsync
Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Rsync

mike82 · 02-02-2008, 10:36 PM

Always keep multiple backups too, in case there is an error with one of them.

jelf · 02-02-2008, 11:53 PM

I second this. Cant believe how many times fucking host said well this one isnt any good..and this one neither. blah

Quote:

Originally Posted by mike82

Always keep multiple backups too, in case there is an error with one of them.

cocoluv · 02-03-2008, 02:01 AM

I know exactly how you feel.

Many years ago while I was writing my thesis for my Masters Degree....hmmm, think B.G. (before Google)....I lost my entire thesis on my hard drive a month out from handing it in. Needless to say, you can you suck in some deep breaths and start again which I did. Plenty of good coffee and some sleepless nights. Just like you said trigatch4

Quote:

take a breath of fresh air, a short break, keep your head up and get back to kicking ass... things could always be worse.

ScottDaMan · 02-03-2008, 06:07 AM

Never trust your data to another company or hardware component. You really need to take matters into your own hand.

rsync sounds cool, I'll check that out in a minute. Your Eureka post really went into greater detail with the play by play.

Anyway, go look into mysqldump. Most linux servers have that, especially if you have cpanel. Anyway, for the future, setup a cronjob on EVERY site that has databases and have it run mysqldump to a backup folder OUTSIDE of your /public_html folder.

I have mine running daily on sites that have content changing daily. Other sites have it running weeky.

Hell, I even have a cronjob that makes a tarball of my site once a week. I login and download weekly. I store these on my local hard disk and my Seagate external drive (FreeAgent).

mysqldump method for DB backups:

Code:

/usr/bin/mysqldump -hlocalhost -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD DBNAME > /home/xxx/backup/DBNAME.`/bin/date +\%Y\%m\%d`.sql

Would make a file: DBNAME.20080203.sql (today's date)

tarball backup of site files (not DBs)

Code:

tar -cf backup/SITEABREV-`/bin/date +\%m\%d\%y`.tar public_html/

Would make a file: SITEABREV-020308.tar
Contents would be all files under your /public_html/

Just remember to login once a week and download. Or else, you'll start using some serious disk space.

If you have shell, login under shell and run these commands first to make sure there's no errors.

I hope this helps. You guys have helped me a lot, I'm always happy to help where I can.

trigatch4 · 02-03-2008, 11:14 AM

Thanks for everyone's consolations, well wishes and advice.

ScottDaMan: Those scripts look like they backup one site at a time since it is asking for DB name and password. What if you have 100 wordpress sites all with their own DB?

I'll definitely talk this over with my host and see if they can help me put this into action... thanks dude.

nis · 02-03-2008, 02:43 PM

You can use mysqldump to dump all databases:

Code:

mysqldump [options] --all-databases

BrooklynBlue · 02-03-2008, 02:43 PM

trigatch,

Daily automated full backups of your web content and databases is definitely worth the effort to get going, as you've learned. I think it takes a harsh lesson to fully realize the value in it. (luckily for me, it was an employer's data rather than my own!)

Anyway, you can backup all databases mysqldump via the --all-databases option. Just make sure you login as the mysql root user so that you have read access to every database. Also, pipe your mysqldump results through gzip to save disk space. Usually can compress at least 70%.

As you scale up across multiple servers or are unable to login and manually retrieve your backups off of your production server for a length of time, having automated rsync and mysql replication to another server (from another provider) is well worth the effort. Also consider implementing backup rotations -- e.g. 1 week of dailys, 2 months of weeklies, 1 year of monthlies, or whatever makes sense for you.

02-02-2008, 02:56 PM	#1 (permalink)
trigatch4 $204/mo. -EurekaDiary.com Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: East Coast, USA Baby Posts: 1,949	I Lost (Almost) Everything Hey guys... last week my web server crashed, the hard drive failed and backups were corrupted. I lost everything I've done on every website since I made Internet Marketing my Full-Time job. I want to remind everyone to put their own backup systems in place... don't put it off... you WILL regret it. Posted my story to my blog and hope you can learn from my mistakes instead of your own. My forums now appear dead and if anyone is interested in college basketball, politics or cooking I would be elated for you to come hang out at Bracketball - Powered by vBulletin, Political Fury - Political News & Discussion - Powered by vBulletin or ChefClub.net - Cooking & Recipe Community. For anyone else dealing with tough times: take a breath of fresh air, a short break, keep your head up and get back to kicking ass... things could always be worse. __________________ ChromeSpot.com - Google Chrome Forum Phandroid.com - Android Phones Rule EurekaDiary.com - My Blog

02-02-2008, 03:14 PM	#2 (permalink)
ChrisS Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 1,485	Holy shit...Did you have any other backups? What are you going to do now? __________________ If you haven’t joined Ads4Dough...You’ll probably end up in a cardboard box behind Wal-Mart.

02-02-2008, 03:34 PM	#3 (permalink)
kamesh Seo Services Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 431	sounds really bad. I thought things were sorted out since its been almost two weeks back that you have told me abt your server crash. __________________ :: Send FREE text message in US and Canada :: Check out WF's Best Manual submission Service Best Social bookmarking and Article submission service Contact: AIM: abbycutlet Msn: abbycutlet@hotmail.com email: chandrasekhar.g@gmail.com

02-02-2008, 05:19 PM	#7 (permalink)
seocracy Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 807	esp. after all those great promo movies. that sucks big time bud __________________ Datapresser.com - Content Generation and Search Engine Analytics Seocracy.com

02-03-2008, 06:07 AM	#15 (permalink)
ScottDaMan Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 943	Never trust your data to another company or hardware component. You really need to take matters into your own hand. rsync sounds cool, I'll check that out in a minute. Your Eureka post really went into greater detail with the play by play. Anyway, go look into mysqldump. Most linux servers have that, especially if you have cpanel. Anyway, for the future, setup a cronjob on EVERY site that has databases and have it run mysqldump to a backup folder OUTSIDE of your /public_html folder. I have mine running daily on sites that have content changing daily. Other sites have it running weeky. Hell, I even have a cronjob that makes a tarball of my site once a week. I login and download weekly. I store these on my local hard disk and my Seagate external drive (FreeAgent). mysqldump method for DB backups: Code: /usr/bin/mysqldump -hlocalhost -uUSERNAME -pPASSWORD DBNAME > /home/xxx/backup/DBNAME.`/bin/date +\%Y\%m\%d`.sql Would make a file: DBNAME.20080203.sql (today's date) tarball backup of site files (not DBs) Code: tar -cf backup/SITEABREV-`/bin/date +\%m\%d\%y`.tar public_html/ Would make a file: SITEABREV-020308.tar Contents would be all files under your /public_html/ Just remember to login once a week and download. Or else, you'll start using some serious disk space. If you have shell, login under shell and run these commands first to make sure there's no errors. I hope this helps. You guys have helped me a lot, I'm always happy to help where I can. __________________ Gay Webmaster Forum

02-02-2008, 04:15 PM	#4 (permalink)
abednego Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 115	I've had a similar issue in the past. Never thought I would ever have to backup until then. It's worth it if you're in it for the long run. Also, many hosting companies provide backup services for no additional charge. Even on dedicated servers. Good luck man.

02-02-2008, 04:55 PM	#5 (permalink)
gopher Pointy-Haired Boss Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: London Posts: 574	Damn man, sorry to hear that. I had something similar happen to me in March of last year, my hard drive just died and they couldn't recover it. All of my local AM work was lost, fortunately not the parts that I kept online. Ever since I've been dumping my complete hard drive with SuperDuper! and I also recently started doing hourly backups with time machine to another external hard drive. Backing it up online will have to wait until I move to my new place and get proper Internet .. But I didn't really think about backing up my online data, will definitely have to put something in place, something happening to that would cripple my business. So thanks for reminding me.

02-02-2008, 05:13 PM	#6 (permalink)
leihen Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 1	sounds bad.anybody have good idea?

02-02-2008, 05:28 PM	#8 (permalink)
tombo100 Banned Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 88	I had the same thing happen to me with a community of 5,000. I even flew down to Miami to the hosting office to get the hard drive and try to restore it myself. No luck and it was not worth paying a service to restore it all. Keep your chin up and I hope you are feeling better.

02-02-2008, 08:22 PM	#10 (permalink)
adamx12m Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 40	HD failures just plain suck. I lost a drive last month and even though I had backups going but for some reason they weren't fully working as I thought. Even though I didn't lose everything even a day's worth of data loss is a huge waste of time considering how cheap storage is vs. your time. Everything from now on is raid 5 or backed up some how. I don't trust dvd's and now i'm back to looking at DLT tapes. Another tip, even if you have backups you should really try once in a while restoring the data just to make sure they really work and how to do it. If it's really critical you should have multiple copies as a strategy. Good luck going forward...

02-02-2008, 08:27 PM	#11 (permalink)
IronLogik Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Posts: 228	sorry to hear about the data loss - that's my nightmare. a little late now, but maybe useful still (for people with linux servers): Backups using rsync Easy Automated Snapshot-Style Backups with Rsync

02-02-2008, 10:36 PM	#12 (permalink)
mike82 Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 81	Always keep multiple backups too, in case there is an error with one of them.

02-03-2008, 11:14 AM	#16 (permalink)
trigatch4 $204/mo. -EurekaDiary.com Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: East Coast, USA Baby Posts: 1,949	Thanks for everyone's consolations, well wishes and advice. ScottDaMan: Those scripts look like they backup one site at a time since it is asking for DB name and password. What if you have 100 wordpress sites all with their own DB? I'll definitely talk this over with my host and see if they can help me put this into action... thanks dude. __________________ ChromeSpot.com - Google Chrome Forum Phandroid.com - Android Phones Rule EurekaDiary.com - My Blog

02-03-2008, 02:43 PM	#17 (permalink)
nis Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 362	You can use mysqldump to dump all databases: Code: mysqldump [options] --all-databases __________________ Vintage Domain Names: Because yesterdays domains just rank better. QAS: Quick Affiliate Stats. Easy overview of your earnings.

02-03-2008, 02:43 PM	#18 (permalink)
BrooklynBlue Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 225	trigatch, Daily automated full backups of your web content and databases is definitely worth the effort to get going, as you've learned. I think it takes a harsh lesson to fully realize the value in it. (luckily for me, it was an employer's data rather than my own!) Anyway, you can backup all databases mysqldump via the --all-databases option. Just make sure you login as the mysql root user so that you have read access to every database. Also, pipe your mysqldump results through gzip to save disk space. Usually can compress at least 70%. As you scale up across multiple servers or are unable to login and manually retrieve your backups off of your production server for a length of time, having automated rsync and mysql replication to another server (from another provider) is well worth the effort. Also consider implementing backup rotations -- e.g. 1 week of dailys, 2 months of weeklies, 1 year of monthlies, or whatever makes sense for you.