You'll need to open a ticket to our support department for this. There's going to be a $30 restoration fee to get a backup of your website. Remember that the backups Winhost does is for their own use. It is used in case of hardware failure as a disaster recovery procedure. It really shouldn't be viewed as a routine or personal backup.
I am also interested in the response to this question. Let me explain, I have had great service from Winhost, but I recently asked for a backup of my website due to the fact I accidentally deleted a file that was critically important. I paid the $30 dollars and was delivered the "backup". However the backup is not a correct representation of my website directory structure as I see it from FTP. I continue to have conversations with Support via ticket [179-13E97637-178F]. So far I have not been able to get through to them that the backup is incorrect. The website has not changed since May of this year so the age of the backup is unimportant. I will post screenshots if necessary to demonstrate (I have already sent a screenshot as a reply when I reopened the ticket). It would be nice to get someone else involved to help resolve this issue. I would hate to take my business elsewhere, but I really must be able to depend on the backup.
The backup is taken by an automated system. What ever files and folders you have in your root is what the backup system took a copy of. I cannot say for sure exactly what is going on with your root but if the structure of your files are different then that what it must be in the root when the backup was taken. When you opened the ticket are you sure you are asking for the correct account. Bear in mind each account can carry multiple site accounts, you will need to specify exactly what the domain name is to the site account, they can be pulling up the wrong backup.
I only have one account. It is for a company that I have started called ccubedgames. We are targeting the Windows Phone 7 market and since the phone is not expected to be released until late October the site was created but has remained dormant since May. I was trying to modify the dotnetnuke web config file (in the DotNetNuke folder) when I inadvertantly overwrote it with a zero length file. I did not have a backup. I asked for the backup yesterday. The backup does not contain all files on the server. Specifically it does not contain the web.config that is in the DotNetNuke folder. I tried to attach the screenshot but it is larger than the 99kb limit (mine is 166Kb) that you have for images. The image was successfully attached to the ticket. Any help you can give me would be appreciated. I don't really want to go to another provider (I left Godaddy cause I just couldn't take the juvenile bullshit anymore), but I will be forced to if this cannot be resolved. --- Ok, I managed to get a portion of a screenshot small enough. On the left is the directory structure under the DotNetNuke folder from the zip file. On the right is the Directory structure under the DotNetNuke folder on the website. Just look at one folder "Documentation". This folder is installed when DotNetNuke installs and is typically not ever modified. There is no Documentation folder in the zip file. Oddly enough there is a file called Documentation. Also, there is no web.config file in the zip file, but there is a web.config folder. Go figure. I need someone to explain why there is such a difference. And while we are at it, please do not tell me that that must have been the way that the root folder looked when the backup was taken. I had not even logged in to the site for a couple of weeks (and I believe that is something that you can verify). So unless someone there randomly screws around with the websites, you have a problem with the settings on your backup software.
From what I am understanding the zip file (backup) they pulled for you did not have the web.config file (not folder) inside the subfolder DotNetNuke... Do you have a ticket with them? Unfortunately like I said before the backup system is automated and it takes an exact copy of what is in that root, files, folders during the time of backup. It does not change, modify, or alter any of the files. Its really odd how all the other files and folders are there but that one dotnetnuke web.config file is not there.
Ray, I do have a ticket it is mentioned in a previous post. All of the other files and folders ARE NOT THERE. My last post mentioned the documentation folder which is not in the zip as a folder but as a document (and it has files and folders under it on my site). It is not the only missing folder, just one of them. Look, the simplest way to resolve this is to compare backups to the files on the disk. If the backup cannot be used to rebuild the file structure using FTP IT IS WORTHLESS. So far the people handling the ticket just keep saying that the backup from 7/27 matches the backup from 7/28. So what? You have two imcomplete copies that match each other, not something you want to pat yourself on the back for. Work with me here for crying out loud!
What would you like us to do? You are asking us for a file that doesn't exist on our system. If the file is not in the backup, how would you suggest we retrieve it?
Well, if your backup does not have this file (or others judging from the content of the zip file) have you found why the automated backup is not backing up all files? I can rebuild my website, but I want to be sure that if a problem happens in the future (say one of your drives goes down and cannot be recovered) we can use the backup to restore the site. Right now I am not convinced that that would be possible. I guess I have two questions. 1. Have you discovered why the backup failed or fails 2. Will you refund the money spend on retrieving the backup since it is not complete? And I am not talking just about the single web.config file but others that are also missing.
It didn't, it doesn't. I hear what you're saying, and I believe you, but it is not verifiable. And as far as we can see in our everyday interaction with it, there's nothing wrong with the backup system. We fulfill backup requests every day, and no one else has reported missing files. I can't, on one person's claim, ask the system administrators to start testing backups, or pull random backups immediately after they are made and compare them to the contents to the sites. There is no reason to do so. Now if others were to report missing files, then we would investigate and do some forensic work. That isn't a comment or judgment on you or your situation, it's just the way shared hosting works. Look around this forum. You can easily find a hundred posts claiming server problems, when in fact, the problem was related to something the customer was doing. So unless we see a problem on our own monitoring systems, or hear from more than one person that something seems terribly wrong, we are going to assume that everything is terribly right. That doesn't mean we wait until hundreds of people are reporting problems before we look into them, it just means - in this case - that one person's report is not sufficient reason to suspect the failure of the entire backup system. Sorry, I know from where you sit you would rather hear something else, but that's the truth, and it's the truth at every shared hosting company. That's up to the billing department. We don't deal with billing issues in the public forum.
One more for the road.... I have had very positive experiences with Winhost and do not wish to go elsewhere. I am a developer and understand that often times people do not understand how things work or deliberately or maliciously misrepresent things for their own gain. However, I can assure you that either your backup process or the process of zipping up the backed up files did not work correctly in my case. You can do what you want with that information. In the future I will not rely on your services to help me out when things go badly. What I will do (and should have done because I know better) is keep a complete copy of the site on my own hardware. Hopefully, you will not have another complaint like mine.... but if you do, remember, you heard it here first.
I will remember, and if we do get similar reports and eventually do find a problem, I'll be sure to come back here and tell you that you were right and I was dead wrong. And for the record, I recommend that everyone maintain their own backups. Our backups are not really meant for customer use, they are for disaster recovery. Maintaining your own prevents you from paying a fee to get ours. And in the event that there was a problem and we had to use those backups, and you discovered that they weren't exactly right, you could upload your own. It's always good to control your own stuff!
