Total Loss of Journal Space WebSite
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Popular web site JournalSpace.com has suffered an unrecoverable loss, after the data files and database which contained the web site were lost from the server on which it was hosted. The site had 14,000 monthly visitors, a Page Rank of 6, and had been in business since 2002. Being Alexa Ranked 106,881 means that it was the 106,881th most visited web site in the world, and with in excess of 60 million web sites now in place that makes it a significant player.
Further investigation into the loss reveals that the only backup of the site was on a Mirror drive – a copy of the hard disc, but that when the data was lost from the main disc drive it could not be recovered from the Mirror. This highlights the danger of using a Mirror system as a backup for any kind of data. Only a separate managed off-site data source can cover events like this.
In the days since the incident initially occurred it has emerged that the most likely cause of the loss was that the files were actually deleted by a disgruntled employee of the company – apparently the same employee who had set up the sub standard backup system, and presumably therefore knew how easy if would be to disrupt.
Disruption is an understatement, as the site has been forced to totally close, with no prospect of recovering the data. As much of the site contained blogs and content generated by its users, there are now tens of thousands of Internet users whose blogs and online articles have simply disappeared. There is a note on the Journal Space domain advising previous JournalSpace.com users that their blogs may be recoverable by looking at past Google’s cache, where old copies of web site pages are stored.
The Journalspace home page (now entertainingly entitled “This is the way the world ends – not with a bang but with a whimper”) also describes the process by which the loss took place, and offers a few shreds of hope and advice for its user community:
http://journalspace.com/this_is_the_way_the_world_ends/not_with_a_bang_but_a_whimper.html
The JournalSpace.com Domain Name is up for sale, to recover the costs of the site owners, with 15% of the proceeds going to charity.
The lesson hardly needs to be spelled out – of course had a secure off-site backup had been in place the web site would still be in business. Get more information about Off-site data backup from Forward ITC - on our Partners page.
