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The Server Backup from Hell

January 16th, 2008 by Joshua Dorkin | Filed under Technology.

Talk about scary situations . . . .

I was looking around at my [tag]server[/tag]’s file structures today and noticed something funny - my [tag]hard drive[/tag] usage had run up to 81% somehow. Not thinking too much about it, I reminded myself to check back again later to see if something was going on. An hour later, my drive was 84% full. 2 Hours later - 88% full. 3 hours later 93% full.

WE HAVE A PROBLEM HERE!

Turns out a temporary backup somehow went awry, and kept growing in size. When all was said and done, this file had approached almost 25GB!

Good thing we caught it and fixed the situation. That could have caused some MAJOR problems…..

Anyone else ever have something like this happen?

14 Responses to “The Server Backup from Hell”

  1. Entertainment | 17/01/08

    Not thinking too much about it, I reminded myself to check back again later to see if something was going on.

  2. debt consolidation free | 17/01/08

    Good thing we caught it and fixed the situation.

  3. Bingo Online | 17/01/08

    My lousy web hosting company back then was pretty stupid..

    they managed to fry their hard drive and their backup drive..

    don’t know whether they were lying or not.. but i moved.. quickly..

  4. Jule K. | 30/01/08

    My hosting company lost my entire blog! Well, sort of: three days after creating it they got hacked and hadn’t done a backup of it - they do them weekly??? But I only lost two posts - lol.

  5. Online Money | 31/01/08

    I have to increase my bandwidth as my traffic is increased almost doubled. When i saw the site is not opening i had quickly increased my bandwidth a part from that no major problems. Any way nice blog Keep it UP :)

  6. Snes | 4/02/08

    nice post. I wish my hosting was easy to set up and administer like working my TV.

  7. Snes | 4/02/08

    Had a simular problem but it has now been sorted

  8. 0% interest | 11/02/08

    if that was me, i would’ve had a panic attack.

  9. Babystrampler | 13/02/08

    Hello I had also the same problem. But now it is ok. puh .-)

  10. The Server Backup from Hell | 28/02/08

    [...] [Technorati] Tag results for technology wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Talk about scary situations . . . . I was looking around at my server’s file structures today and noticed something funny - my hard drive usage had run up to 81% somehow. Not thinking too much about it, I reminded myself to check back again later to see if something was going on. An hour later, my drive was 84% full. 2 Hours later - 88% full. 3 hours later 93% full. WE HAVE A PROBLEM HERE! Turns out a temporary backup somehow went awry, and kept growing in size. When all was said and done, [...]

  11. Justin | 16/03/08

    I had this happen once. The /var partition that had mySQL data on it got full. When that happens mySQL just wigs out and dies.. All databases were lost! As a result I keep way better backups. This was several years ago. Live and learn I say.

  12. Backup Software | 28/07/08

    yea i prefer to be safe than sorry, even if it costs me $5 a month. Its worth it for unlimited backup and being able to not have to worry.
    -mike

  13. Christopher Mason | 3/08/08

    I agree, better to be safe than sorry!

  14. Lastminute | 4/08/08

    if that was me, i would’ve had a panic attack.

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