Motorhome Facts -

This is an update for those who feel a little cut off from whats happening with the site,

I did put some updates on the old temp forum, but the site went offline due to the boot drive in the server malfunctioning hence the perfromance issues encountered over its last few days.

We did notice this and ordered a replacement drive in advance. We thought that having a backup drive in the server which kept all the data in a second place would give us redundancy in the event of the primary drive going completely faulty, however this wasnt so, for some unknown reason the main drive had whats deemed a catastrophic failure whereby the computer server wouldnt even recognise it was there, the second drive had different symptoms in that the server recognized it but thought it was blank. We ascertained that the partition table was corrupt.

The contractor we hired managed to recover the partition from a backup copy held on the drive and carry out whats called a FSCK scan of the drive which attempts to recover bad sectors and get access to the good data again. This however wasnt effective and left us with a few files of no use.

We still have no idea as to why the drives failed as they were only 4 months old. The host company who removed the drives did say they were extremely hot. I have no avenue for repercussions as all hard drives are guarranteed to fail with a MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) allocated to them. THe hardware is under warranty but the manufacturer wont cover against data failure.

I asked the specialist data recovery company what they thought and they said that those particular drives which were Maxtor Diamond PLus Max 9 160Gb drives had a fairly normal reputation and the only thing they can think of is that the main drive had a major problem with heat etc of some description and due to the close proximity of the drives crammed inside a server may have caused issues on the other drives electronics. This is why we are semi hopefull of retrieving some data as it may simply be the electronics have been fried somewhat. Only time will tell

I apologise if the members feel left high and dry, this has been devestating to me perhaps more than anyone as there was 1.5 years of my blood, sweat and tears on those drives, not only for MHF but also my actual livelyhood as i run other websites which generate income. At present my income level has dropped to 0 this is obviously stressfull enough.

I am working all the hours i can, Julie and i have cancelled any and all plans to concentrate solely on working on this, and i have garnered the help of a fellow coder friend.

I will do "EVERYTHING" i can to get the sites back up to a resemblance of before the problems. I have copies of all the different database/directory front ends, just need to spend a little time converting them over to this new interface framework. Its the actual content entered by the members that i have not got a backup of. i.e. the campsites, specifications etc and of course the all important forum postings.

I am trying to be upbeat as their are a few small Pros here, the new content framework has some advantages over the old one, it is more secure, has extra facilities not immediately apparent such as the ability to attach files and photos direct in the forums without having to upload to the gallery etc first. Many other advanced facilities to numerous to list here also. I had plans to upgrade to this in the end, but events being what they are they forced my hand.

"IF" we get some data back from the old site i can import it into this framework. The databases i created will be a simple process, the forum posts a longer one, but it is possible.

Anyways i must get on with doing more work I will add this to the front page as well now and i need to remove the temp forums as well.

Adieu

Dave