admin

Firstly I would like to apologise for the long time period with no information. It has been a very frustrating time for all.


After having our hard drives examined by a data recovery centre it was hoped that data recovery was going to be fairly easy as
both drives powered up and were recognised instantly. However the data recovery technician had a lot of problems trying to read data
as the drives were originally placed in a Raid 0 configuration ( which was NOT something we ever requested ). A Raid 0 configuration means that 2 hard drives are seen by the server as one big hard drive and data cannot be recovered unless you have both discs.

After a lot of failed recovery efforts the technician sent an image of the drives to their head office in Sydney where they also were unable
to piece the data together. Things were not adding up at all and after much head scratching and discussion , the data company suggested that one of the drives was not Austech's.The techician managed to recover some data off one drive and advised us of the content and it was obvious that this disk was not a drive out of Austech's server. Austech's server runs 2 x 73 gig SCSI drives and the build dates of both were different , though this didnt necessarily indicate we had an incorrect drive but did cause some suspicion.

I then got on to our host , Leaseweb , and asked them to explain exactly what was going on. Their initial reaction was very slow ( much like their reaction when we had the server stop working ) but soon sped up when I mentioned that it appeared I had another customer's data.

Without going through the whole story ( which would be 10 pages long ) , our host used a third hard drive to try and boot the server.
When I purchased the drives to recover the data , they packaged one of Austech's drives and a hard drive they used to try and boot the Raid array with. Out of the 2 hard disks I received , one was Austech's and the other belonged to a third party German business website or was an unformatted spare from an old server that still had data on it.

Our host , Leaseweb , does not keep a record of hard drive serial numbers and cannot find our missing drive. Without the missing drive , no data can be recovered because it was in a Raid 0 array and requires both original hard disks. I have exhausted all efforts totally in getting Leaseweb to find this drive ( which is why I havent made any announcement ) , it appears after they boxed the drives the other drive was discarded as RMA. Either way , once it was mixed with other drives it would not be able to be found because they do not keep hard disk serial numbers. Their incompetence in all dealings has been shocking and believe me , there has been some jaws hitting the floor in disbelief in Austech's staff area as we have read their emails and those from the Data Recovery company.

Obviously I am very unhappy about this , but there is nothing I can do or say to change the situation. I am unhappy that I made a very bad mistake and originally put us in this position , but even unhappier that what would have been an easy data recovery is now impossible ( the one drive of ours that was supposedly dead started up fine....not dead as described by Leaseweb ).

I have now exhausted all avenues in regards to recovery and all I can do is apologise ( and confirm finally ) that the data is permanently gone. I also apologise
for the lack of information in the last month but didnt want to make any announcement until all avenues of recovery were exhausted. Which they now are.

I would like to thank everyone for their help and support , from Moderators to members. The amount of support has been unbelievable , I have answered probably 2-3 thousand emails since the start of the year and have only had 3 negative ones which shows the quality of the members the site has. The site will continue , we have had a major set back but the support of members has made me more willing than ever to get the forum back to how it was , even though we have had to start from scratch in regards to threads.I have come to an agreement with Andrew in regards to trying to restore the forum to exactly how it was and he will keep plugging away until its done.

Is there anything members can do to help ?


Make a bigger effort to post or start threads. Although our traffic has recovered reasonably well and we have bounced back quite well , we still need a greater effort from members. We will be awarding a free Premium Membership at the end of each month ( or a years extension to existing members ) to members who put in a consistant effort to help others where they can , getting involved and doing what they can to help us to help you. Try and attract new members to the site and ask them to use you as the referrer , this is also something we will be looking at.


Although we cant do anything about the threads and posts , one thing we can do ( with your help ) is when members have time we would appreciate it if you could re-add feedback to any member you have had dealings with through our Buy Sell and Trade Classifieds and Forum.
Buy Sell and Trade feedback is very important on Austech due to the large amount of items sold and traded so we would appreciate your help with
adding feedback for any specific transactions. Please only leave feedback for a specific transaction , NOT " Bill is a good bloke and I have
had heaps of dealings with him ". " I purchased a satellite receiver from Bill which was in good working order " is what we want to see.Your
help with this is appreciated and vital to restoring this system to a usable tool to members once again. Initially you can only give a small amount of feedback a day until you get a couple yourself , this is to stop abuse. Should you suspect anyone of abusing the system , please contact a Moderator immediately.

Lastly , I again wish to thank the entire sites support particuarly those who made a donation to assist with the data recovery. I am sorry it
wasnt a success when it should have been. I would also like to thank all Moderators for their help in drafting this rather long explanantion , but I thought it necessary to fully explain the situation and am not really a wizard with words. Also , we are lucky that we DO have a copy of all previous members emails so we will also be mailing out a link to this statement to all email addresses on this list. For this reason you may receive this email twice. We apologise for this , the initial email is to current members who agree to accept mail from us as per control panel settings and the second is to all email addresses on our previous mailing list that agreed to receive mail.


Kind Regards and thank you for your support
Paul ( admin ) Austech