We had a hard drive failure on the web server computer on October 21st. Our web hosting company was supposed to be keeping weekly offsite backups of the entire site. I had just spoken with them about it shortly before this happened. Well.. you guessed it, they actually were not keeping any backups at all. We had local backups for the static portions of the website such as the Links and the shopping area, but not for the dynamic portions such as the Discussion Board and the Classifieds. I knew I shouldn't have be relying on the web hosts backups, but I put it on the back burner because they were doing it... well never again. We will keep all our own backups of everything!

We sent the failed hard drive to a recovery center in Connecticut to see if they could retrieve the data. They first said they could, but after taking the drive apart they determined that the data was unrecoverable.

Our only option was to recreate the Discussion board and Classifieds from the last complete local backup that we have which is from May of 2004.

Discussion Board:
The Board is back up as of 11/05/2005. If you registered more recently than May of 2004 you will need to register again. If you had a logo or a picture with your profile it will be gone and you will have to upload it again. We would be happy to help anyone with registration and logos and will update your registration date and number of postings to reflect those that are occurred since May 2004. Just send me and email and we will do it. You can still use the Discussion Board without registering, but we encourage you to go ahead and register.

Classifieds:
The Classifieds are back up as of 11/09/2005 . Registration for the Classifieds is separate from the Discussion board, but in most cases you can choose the same username and password (unless they are taken). Again you will need to reregister if your original registration was more recent than May 2004.

I apologize for this disruption and loss of data, it won't happen again. We will have the best backup available.

I know that many of you rely on Discussion Board and Classifieds, and many of you have put a great deal of time and energy into providing answers on the discussion board. I hope you will come back and continue to use and enjoy the site.

Regards,

Andrew Menkart

MarineEngine.com