Things are finally back to normal now. After much hard work restoring accounts from no backup, I am happy to say that the server is back up and we're up and running better than ever! Instead of just mirroring the old setup on the server, we took the restore as an opportunity to upgrade the operating system to FreeBSD 8 64bit running the SMP kernel. We were running FreeBSD 7 32bit SMP before, so now we're using the right OS for the hardware we have.

Also in the works is an external backup solution running Raid 6. I am currently talking with GigeNET to figure out pricing for a starter package, and we will see how that works out. The goal is to never have to go through this situation again (not having backups). The time it took to restore accounts without backups was just immense compared to the quick click and restore of the accounts that had them. I never want to have to do that again, and I know you don't want to have to wait for us to do manual restores if the hard drives crash. Backups are now going to be a #1 priority for us so we can avoid this situation in the future.

While I am upset that we had the hard drive failure, I am thrilled to announce some positive changes that have arisen because of it.