Im glad I spread my hosting around.Host hacked-back too

One of the hosts I use server was hacked, plus...they managed to get in and corrupt all the servers backups. I then found out that my host had been less than honest when they had initially told me that they had external back ups of everything. Seems they had not gotton around to fitting it.

I am trying to recover my sites now, and I'm getting my own server too!
I'm just so glad that my sites were spread around on different hosting.
Thought I would mention to all as host had been less than honest claiming to have external back ups in place. I don't think you can do anything legally either if host does this-so all be careful with hosting.

Well , i think due to stance of competitive hosting companies , RELIABILITY of them is actually lost. This plays in part with complete unproffesionality.

shane

Its very hard to get your own internet-linked server, the server itself isn't hard but the dns link and hub links are very expensive.

And I sympathise for you. Sue the webhost... honestly, if they claimed they had a backup and they did not then they are not providing the service you are paying for.

Most webhosts wont restore your data unless it was their fault the data is missing or corrupt. I've found this from previous experience (3 times infact), So I always make my own external backups.

You'd definitely win a small claims case, if they claimed to do something and just blatently did not (especially if it really hurt your business), it's false advertising. However, always make your own backups, bad things do happen to people with good intentions, even hosting companies. I've run a hosting company since 2002 and I've scheduled backups and had multiple things go wrong with multiple servers at the same time, nothing even of my own personal doing and data recovery can get very expensive, I'm sorry to hear about your bad hosting expirience.

Well, typically a web host would have a clause in their TOS that clients are responsible for their own backups - therefore, I am not certain a lawsuit would get you anywhere, even if there was a ROI for the lawsuit.

Regarding backups in particular - I often cringe at what I hear referred to as backups. RAID is not a backup, it is redundancy - backups to a second drive on the server - although technically a backup, really isnt overly reliable, as a root level hack wont really protect the backups.

Backups need to be done at least locally on a different machine (large NAS or SAN) and preferrably offsite as well.

Additionally, most companies with reliable backup/recovery solutions will charge you for a recovery (unless of course the data loss was their fault)

Finally, please do not expect to purchase 10 gig's of diskspace + get reliable backups/recovery solutions for the price of a cup of coffee.

We have an extensive backup/recovery solution where we keep 30 days worth of backups of everything, and will restore from any of the 30 restore points for a fee. The cost of this solution is pretty expensive (storage arrays, backup/recovery software capabable of differential backups, capable of backing up/recovering multiple platforms, etc + redundancy in hard drives on the backups arrays)

Now, I understand what you are all saying about hosts misleading you as to their quality of backups, etc... However, at some point consumers need to take responsibility for their actions - and you cannot expect to pay $5/month for hosting and receive an Enterprise grade backup solution

Well, I wasn't paying $5 bucks but not to worry.
As it happens I had got myself a dedicated server and have been testing that out with my new hosts for a few months, so Im now happy to say-they are great and all my stuff will now be placed on two dedicated servers from them now, so hopefully all will be safe:) I really have done my reasearch and moved everything now. Even gave me the idea to make a little site out of my findings too.lol

whats your previous host? It'd be interesting to know who they are lol. Who knows, I might just be hosting with them :S

Personally I think *anyone* who relies on a webhosts back up is mad. Do your own backups and most control panels make this easy.

Most, if not all webhosting company, including those top guns, have made it clear on thier TOS that website backups are the responsibility of the webmaster. Its really hard to get a claim based on this.

I am glad that you are able to accept the fact that this type of problems exist on the net. Its good that you have moved on positively.

Good luck!