On Sunday morning, I got an error when the daily backup routine was supposed to run. It basically told me that the files could not be written. Looking at the file destination, it was clear that the 2nd HD that I use for backups was not accessible, all the data was gone.

I contacted tech support at the provider and asked them for help. They recommended rebooting the server to see if that would bring the drive back. It did not. The whole server would not come back online. They then told me that they would have to take out both HDs, install a new system with new HDs and attach the old ones to the system via USB so I could get back the data.

That failed, too. The old backup HD did not even spin up, the main HD would spin up but would not be recognized by the system. The whole process until then had taken from 10:00am until 8pm. I then started to download offsite backups (several Gigabytes) from the internet to my local PC and then again upload them to the server. That basically took the night.

I am now working on getting the minecraft server back up.

What was lost?

• World & inventory data from 10-19th September: I could not restore the daily backup but only the weekly one. So whatever was built, in your inventory or otherwise stored on the server is reset. I am sorry about that. t seems that the off-site backup was misconfigured to not save the daily but only the weekly data. Of course I will fix that once the server is back up.
• The darklands: This is as announced. Since the darklands is much too big due to exploration, It was never backed up and therefore cannot be restored. We will re-generate it. I am not sure if we use the same world id or not.
• The Nether: Same as the darklands. The only thing that I made a backup some days ago is Daiyas monster-build (23rd of August).
• System information: While this does not affect users directly, a lot of the config files on the server were lost. I will have to re-create a lot of stuff and re-configure things to get them up and running again. I assume that this will be 1-2 full days of work to get things going again.

What was not lost?

• Everything in a database. The database that I could restore was the version from Saturday, so it should be pretty much up to date (10 hours or so lost max, nothing that affects you if you did not log in since then). This means your shop, deposit, money lots etc are pretty much up to date.

What did we win?

• Glow stone: Since the nether was reset, you can get glow stone now easily again
• Fortresses: Since the Darklands was reset, you can now get materials from the fortresses again – if you are fast enough.

Again, I am sorry for anything that was lost. I was taken by surprise that both HDs failed at the same time. I never expected that to happen and I have vague suspicions that the tech guys at the provider somehow screwed the main HD up when they disconnected it. I guess it’s a risk to take when using a cheap hoster. I have looked around for a long time for alternative hosters but the costs are normally double if not triple. The fact that I have to manage all by myself and don’t have anyone to check on what I am doing is not helping as you can see, since I am not that experienced when hosting things. Lessons learned. I will try to be more prepared for future crashes.