I don’t know about you, but I rather assume that data I store on internet sites will not be lost by those hosting them. I use Gmail for my (free) mail and I trust Google not to lose my mail. I have photos on Flickr and I trust Yahoo not to lose them, even though I don’t pay them anything. I host this site, and others, with Bluehost and I pay them not an insubstantial amount of cash to do so. I trust(ed) them not to lose my data. Their forum administrator states that “Bluehost is automatically doing backups for you, daily, weekly and monthy.” This is bollocks. A week or so ago I discovered that all my data on this blog had gone. When I contacted Bluehost I immediately got a total lack of an apology and the statement:
- “Dear Customer, We do not guarantee that we will keep any specific backup data for your account. While we do backup the data for your account every couple of weeks, that is the extent of it. We suggest that in the future, you keep a backup copy of your domain at an off-site location.”*
Well, thanks for that then. Further correspondence revealed that the last back-up they had done was three weeks previously, so much for daily, weekly.
After much work I have now rebuilt the past. Sadly I have paid for two years with crappy Bluehost. I am now doing back-ups.