Anybody who uploads to CanStock might be interested in this post from Admin Duncan, dated 9/3/06:
"At around 1:00am local time we had a major database failure, affecting our photo information section. This was an unrecoverable fault, in which our database software could not recover. In laymens terms all of the photo information (keywords, titles, photographers, etc) was wiped out.
I was online at the time, and immediately shut down the site, to avoid any further damage. I also immediately put on a diaper. I was able to quickly determine the source of the problem, but the damage was already done.
Working together with our hosting technicians, we were able to painstakingly recover most of the data from our current backup, taken at 8am Sunday morning. Our database is 3GB in size, and has almost 40million records, so this was a fairly slow process.
The failure was totally unpredictable, and impossible to predict. This of course is why we have backups, which luckily run every morning.
If you uploaded photos on Sunday, after 8am Atlantic Time:
- All of your uploads will appear in your Unfinished Uploads section. Even if you submitted them for approval, they will now be sent back for re-submission. You will have to re-enter your keyword information.
- Xpress Photographers who had photos uploaded and approved on Sunday will also have to re-submit the files. You will also have to re-enter your keyword information.
Everyone else can take it easy, as nothing else should be affected.
My apologies to everyone who has to re-fill out their keyword information. I know its a pain in the butt. But on the bright side, only 700 of out 260,000 images were affected.
If you have any problems, please contact Support.
Duncan"