Microsoft: Sidekick data recovery takes time

Microsoft on Monday apologized for the length of time it is taking to restore missing data to T-Mobile Sidekicks. The company said it expects to begin restoring data this week, but added that bringing back all data will take longer than that.

T-Mobile Sidekick LX

(Credit: CNET)

In a note on its Web site, Microsoft said that the reason for the delay is that the company wants to make sure that it doesn't risk messing up data as it restores information to users' phones.

"The Danger/Microsoft team is continuing to work around the clock on the data restoration proces," Microsoft said. "We apologize that this is taking so long, but we want to make sure we are doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of your data."

A significant number of Sidekick owners have been without their data since the beginning of the month, when Sidekick data service became interrupted amid a massive outage. At one point, Microsoft feared much of the data was lost, but the company said early last week that things were looking better and later added that it expected to be able to bring back most, if not all, of the data.

"We continue to make steady progress, and we hope to be able to begin restoring personal contacts for affected users this week, with the remainder of the content (photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores) shortly thereafter," Microsoft said.

[Mark_Anderson]

If it works that the main thing.

I'd still be interested in full disclosure on what exactly happened here though.

[birellar]

good observation about <a href="http://www.stellarinfo.co.in">data recovery>.

thanks

[Random_Walk]

...they're likely trying to rebuild it from Oracle's transaction logs.

What this means? In spite of Microsoft's worst bungling (having no working backup, doing a SAN upgrade on a live production system, etc), the product they spent so much time in trying to blame (Oracle) still delivered to them a usable means of data restoration.

[kojacked]

And if they were using SQL Server the difference would be what? Thanks for pointing out an obvious feature of any enterprise level database server. Blaming Oracle? Oh please! If a Microsoft employee farted and it sounded a little like Oracle you'd call that "blaming".

Oh thank god for Random's infinite wisdom!!! Maybe you should change your alias to "Sean Hannity" or "Glen Beck".

[Random_Walk]

"And if they were using SQL Server the difference would be what?"

Point is, they blamed having a Sun/Oracle rig for the outage, yet there's Oracle, saving its butt.

And yes, they did try to blame Oracle, Sun, T-Mobile, Mars in Retrograde, Bad Auras... pretty much anything but their own sloppy carelessness:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/microsoft_actually_not_blame_sidekick_data_loss

[Vegaman_Dan]

For the record, it was an Oracle data base running on Sun (BSD) and Linux servers. They had a failure of the Sun system and that took down the rest. That's bad network design. That's also what Danger, a company founded and designed by ex-Apple employees, created.

Microsoft inherited a mess, plain and simple. It's harder to rebuild when it's all screwed up in the first place. The database appears to have been saved so that's good.

[symbolset]

@Vegaman_Dan: When you're trying that hard to give Microsoft a pass on responsibility you don't do your credibility or their cause any good. Have you tried deflecting the issue by referencing Apple's data loss issue yet? I've seen that used much more effectively. "See. They're not so bad. Everybody loses data!" That works SO much better.

[Random_Walk]

Actually Dan, the most credible word is that Microsoft tried to do a firmware upgrade on the SAN, but decided to do it without making a backup of the data first.

In any other org, a sysadmin who pulled that stunt would be unemployed.

[kojacked]

Randumb,

I read your article. What crap. This is all you had so serve up?

"So who is to blame? Oracle, Linux, and Sun, Microsoft said in not so many words".

Lots of facts there...

[igl00lgi]

I love that title. Meanwhile you and your customers are scrambling to figure out just what was lost. But your customers will understand, It's the great "CLOUD." as presented by Microsoft.

[jmdunys]

@Vegaman_Dan: How misinformed are you (unless you are blindly defending Microsoft)? Stating that Microsoft inherited a mess is shockingly untrue.

First, there was NO failure. It is a well accepted fact (google Marie Jo Foley).
Second, there was NO proper backup. This is also an accepted fact.

Now read the content of the following link with an open mind. It certainly makes sense.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/10/15/microsofts-pinkdanger-backup-problem-blamed-on-roz-ho/

[tisesunshine]

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