how do recreate a lost database?

I just lost my entire database and Arvixe had not proper set up the back ups which I had requested a long time ago.

Does anyone one know how I can recreate the database?

If you don't have a backup, you're pretty much screwed.

yep I'm screwed.

2 years work just varnished!

Time to go back to Host For Web.

I had an issue with Arivxe already when I did upgrade the serve, my site was a mess and it took me and people I paid a few days to get it going again. But its enough. There people are somehow useless. When that happen before I asked them to set me up the backup and they did it not correct. I pay 135$ a month and will fight for to get the money back for this month.

I'm having a f**king headache now. 1600 real members gone and the site was doing well.

Anyway, life goes on and I will not give up. Have to do all on my own I guess to have it work proper and just pay the folks who are able to work wat they earn.

I wish you all good luck and lots of success!

That really bites. My host keeps backups for previous 2 days just in case I need them, but I have been where you are now (less members) and have had to start over. This does take forever to get members back. I have almost got all mine back and it took almost 6 months. I understand the members fear of a host that does not keep back ups, but sometimes crap happens. GOOD LUCK!

Contact Arvixe again and ask them that you are ready to pay to get the backup...usually they charge around $100 if you need a backup. The host usually saves an image of the whole server from where they can get you the backup...

Secondly who did the upgrade? Probably they might have saved a backup, check with them as well...

Thank you :-)

do u not even have an old backup ??

may be a month old, or even older, may be u can go back to that install and upload that backup.. that will save some members, and other data..

Due to billing issues on their end, my Arvixe account became suspended at one point. When I paid to have it reactivated, they also gave me the option to pay an additional $25 to restore my site.

Maybe they can do this for you. If not, I have a direct number to the company owner from having to have a few word with him.

You have his number, too?

@OP: If Arvixe has another backup method besides a per-account basis, (as said above), you should be able to have them restore your site from these backups for a fee (which can be rather high). You may also want to look into doing your own backups in case something like this happens again. I run cron jobs that backup certain site files and databases so that I don't have to shelve out hundreds to my host if the equivalent of doomsday arrives.

Magnussoft, unfortunately, I spent over an hour on the phone with him. My initial issue was with the redirecting of my site to another site that was full of malware and viruses. I was directed from a few people in these forums to contact my host. I allow him to look at my files then he says that he cant do anything about it. At the same time, Spike was in an online chat with one of his reps and the rep was trying to help us out more by removing the line of code that was placed in there somehow (not by the Snatfu Team).

He tells me that they are not allowed to make changes like that and when I asked him why my site was completely down from a change that his rep made, he had no explanation and sounded like a broken record saying he or his staff did not touch my files. We saved the chat session and emailed it to him.

By the end of the conversation, he had offered to refund any and all of my money but I refused. I made him fix the issue and left it at that.

So, who need's his number? lol

Hello Diddy-

I'm sorry for your troubles. As has been outlined by others in this post, we do have full system backups of all of our shared hosting. In such cases, since the mysql database is in the innodb format, it is not possible to extract a single database out of that backup through R1Soft. So, what we are left to do is to setup a whole new environment (VPS/dedicated), install the R1Soft agent and restore all files to that environment. Then extract out just your database in .sql format and restore your database. This does take several hours of work and a charge is involved which is generally offered to the customer.

However, based on your second update, it looks like you have a dedicated server with us (at $135). Please note that dedicated servers (especially those with one drive which would most likely be what you have at $135), are not backed up . We strongly suggest that you keep daily backups of your databases and weekly backups of your files locally as your hard drive on the server could fail and result in a partial or full data loss. Alternatively, upon request, as these servers are a 100% management, we can setup cPanel to backup your files to the same hard drive in case the loss of database was accidental (such as in your case). So, please contact us and let us know if you'd like that setup. Lastly, for full protection from complete harddrive failure, I would strongly suggest looking into having a second drive on the server and having us setup backups to that. For $50 per month extra we can also setup your server on our R1Soft backups where 10 different windows of backups are made every 6 hours and we can restore part of or the entire server to any of those snapshots.

Snatfu - Our shared server R1Soft backups (for files and not dbs) are available through the control panel as well as to our staff to use to restore accounts at any time on a per file basis. And upon that conversation, restoring the index.php from the backups restored your site to working condition.

The explanation given by Arixe above is doublespeak. Somebody really needs to file a civil action against Arvixe. Not keeping backups is one of the most basic functions of a server provider and telling someone they can't retrieve their data because it's lumped in with others is ridiculous!.  If it was me, I guarantee you they would be talking to my attorney....

Good Lord.. No backups? ..

@ Diddy - Seems like it will cost a fortune more than the cost you are already paying to get your data back. Sorry to hear that and would hate to be in your shoes. I found the best solution is to purchase your own backup software. I have one that backups 1 domain and its database for $19 on a DAILY basis (first one is full, then incremental after that) to your local machine. I have a TB drive that stores it all. If you are interested I would suggest looking into Site Vault. I won't post the link here but you can google it.

It's actually quite common for dedicated servers to not have backup services. Providers are not required to do it.

Zarcon - I will also recommend SiteVault.  I purchased SiteVault, also at $19, after my hosting company said they could restore my site to the previous day.  I ended up with software restored to previous day and database 7 days prior.  That was a mess to recover from.  Fortunately, my site was not 'live' yet.  I've used the SiteVault files numerous times to compare files from a prior day to current day.

Thank you for posting this.......It reminds me how important it is to back-up........Good Luck I hope you get it back..... 

No hosting provider will provide free backups for dedicated servers...it's a dedicated server and it's the owner's responsibility  to configure it,  back it up and all other related stuff...I have been with a lot of hosting providers olm, godaddy, ixwebhosting, lunarpages etc and own couple of dedicated servers and I am pretty satisfied with Arvixe so far ....

Just my 2 cents...

I actually had pretty bad experience with Arvixe .....  support really sucks... but maybe I had just a bad luck ...

ok I found a old database from 25th September 2010 which will be Dol 7.0.2.

Now my question is where can I download the old dolphin 7.0.2?

I'm disappointed cos I did request at live support of Arvixe to set my daily backups for which i got my first backup email notification on the 5th of October 2010. When I lost the database on the 28th of December I went to live support and they set backups are there but not of the databases. it was wrongly setup by the person who did it and that Arvixe apologize.

The thing is after I got my email notifications I felt secure that my daily backups were running cos I lost data before in my dolphin history :-)

I got a headache about this issue and surely will lose members.

Anyway I will not give up and somehow I will get the site going again.

@Zarcon, thanks I will definitive consider getting Site Vault

@Arvixe, since I still give free membership to my members and only have expenses I will not be able to pay that extra amount to be more secure cos I simply don't have it in my pocket.

Otherwise I want to thank everyone and I'm quite happy if others will learn from it :-)

Several hours? Seriously? It takes minutes to deploy a new VPS environment, drop it from the network to isolate it and restore the duplicate file set - unless you are running your servers with IDE hard drives??

This situation is horrible, and it seems Diddy is really getting the short end of the stick here. He had requested (and paid for I assume) to have backups scheduled and initiated already, maybe the conversation was not had about including the database in the backup but shutting a customer out like this is horrible service.

You don't get 1600 members to join a dolphin site overnight (unless you use a mod of course ), hopefully the previous backup you did have doesn't set you back too far Diddy!

@Arvixe, since I'm surely not the only beginner and learner you have as your customers I suggest that you inform your customers of such things. A entire backup is a necessarity especially if its a dedicated server customers rent. Why people have a dedicated server, sure not cos they have websites without databases and a database is in my point of view one of the most important part of a huge website.

And as you know as well as I do, I did upgrade with the demand of my sites in the same way I will or would have with my sites growing.

Of course I do wish you guys at Arvixe success!

Why don't you cheapskates just do the right thing and restore the guys site already?  In the time it took you to compose this long winded reply, you could have been half done with it.  You guys don't exactly have a sterling reputation around here, and just doing what is right here, just might go a long way in changing how your company is perceived by most of us.  Do you really want to be known as a company that just snubs a customer in need?

Countless hours, headache, tired, reinstalling, upgrading, doing, making, what the f**k

I got it back so far the spy mod is going crazy showing that I view a member countless times and still going, my header is missing above the main menu.

Any suggestions would be really appriciated.

lost about 2oo something members for which I spend endless hours getting them to join. Which was daily 2 to 3 hours from 1st of October2010 on until 18th of December where I lost the database.

when logging in I get at member.php:

Warning: require_once(BxArlCalendar.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/xxxxx/public_html/modules/boonex/articles/classes/BxArlModule.php on line 24

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'BxArlCalendar.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/xxxx/public_html/modules/boonex/articles/classes/BxArlModule.php on line 24

And of course I have to delete all photos which where uploaded by members after the date of my old found database as well as videos cos otherwise they will be in profiles of new sihning members, or I simply add a higher user ID to a member I create and then it might be ok, but the photos and videos would be hanging around useless as well as using disk space and therefore I take em out.

More issues will surely come up.

My ticket at Arvixe support came something today:

Hello,

This is a quick notification to let you know that your ticket has been auto-escalated to management. While we can not guarantee that you will receive a response as soon as your ticket is escalated, we can make sure that a qualified individual from our management takes a look at your issue and makes an informed decision based on our ability to take care of your specific request.

and it goes on for a bit.As well as getting tired to explain everytime what happen and blah blah blah.

Also an issue. within 2 days I talk to 3 or 4 different people and each time I have to taslk from the beginning!

Support ticket and ohhhh my ano in the sky

 all of my hosting providers for my dedicated servers have said that doing backups is my responsibility - but liquidweb does do backups - that they do not tell you about. Had an issue where someone hacked my server and they sent me an email explaining this and that they restored everything using their backup.