I try to say ‘Goodbye diary-x’
I tried my best to log down all that happened about the crash of diary-x’s. I must say that I didn’t really log down a whole lot of things. But this is what I managed to do. It’s damn hard to say goodbye to all those memories; beautiful or ugly. But I certainly had a wonderful time blogging there. It was really more than a blog or a journal. It was practically my life in my perspective, written in my own words. There won’t be a time which I could say “let me take a look at what happened in the past.” I can never say that for the things that I blogged about since 1st July 2003 till 12th February 2006. I don’t know how to fill in this void, but I guess it’s time for closure, that is, if I can even manage it. I just hope that I’ll be smarter enough this time to keep backups. Right now, I’m not entirely sure if I can continue or if I should continue with those episodes. It seems incomplete. But well, nothing really feels like diary-x no matter where I change my blog address to. I’m sticking it here for now and I hope that nothing of the same nature would happen or that I would somehow lose my blog again.
Monday, February 27th, 2006
12:23 pm
Quick by Dallas Morning News, February 27, 2006
Journal Web Site Wiped Out
Diary-X, an online journaling community, has been shut down because of a drive failure.
“All journals, user information, forum posts, templates, images, and everything else are all irrecoverably lost,” site founder Stephen Deken said in a post.
Diary-X.com was founded in 2000, and by last year hosted an estimated 120,000 journals.
There is a database at the site where former users can list their new blog sites and contact information.
– From ‘Quick’, a publication of the Dallas Morning News. http://quickDFW.com/
(This is officially more press attention than we ever got while actually running. Sigh.)
Sunday, February 26th, 2006
4:28 pm
There’s a page on diary-x.com for you to enter your forwarding information now, as well as a limited amount of information about the ‘reborn’ diary-x.
Thanks!
On diary-x website:
February 26, 2006
There is now a simple database up where you can enter your forwarding information. Unfortunately I can’t keep forwarding your email, because I don’t know whose email is supposed to go where anymore. But this database should let you meet up with people, wherever they went off to.
Tons of people have asked me to keep the site open. I know that it’s a shock to have this gone away so completely and so suddenly. Unfortunately, I am in no position to re-open the site, purely from a time perspective. A group of dedicated Diary-Xers are getting together to revive the site under a different name, starting with what’s left of the code. I will be participating in that project, but I will not be running it.
If you’re interested in helping, watch this space. When things get set up, I’ll post more information here. The team is going to need talented designers, programmers who are familiar with Perl and PHP, and people with good writing skills.
I’ll post more when I know it.
Stephen Deken
stephen.deken@gmail.com
February 24, 2006
Dear Friends,
There is no easy way for me to say this.
Diary-X has suffered from an unrecoverable drive failure. Due to a combination of issues, the last backup (from December 2004) contained only configuration files and other non-essential files. We do not have any other backups for the site. All journals, user information, forum posts, templates, images, and everything else are all irrecoverably lost.
In the past several hours, I have had to decide whether or not I should put the site back online at all. Only those users who backed up their own journals (either using the journal download tool or otherwise saving each entry) would be able to reconstruct their journals. Everyone else would have to start over. Whatever developed as a result would still be called Diary-X, but it wouldn’t be the same.
I believe it makes the most sense to close Diary-X permanently. Tentatively, the site will go dark on March 31st, 2006.
Thank you for being so generous with your donations during this crisis. Your generosity and kind words were the sole bright spots during this disaster. If you would like a refund, please send an e-mail to mdeken@gmail.com with your name and PayPal e-mail address, and we will process it as soon as we can, hopefully within 24 hours.
If you would like to discuss this matter further, you may contact me at the address below. I will do my best to answer your questions if they were not addressed here.
Regretfully,
Stephen Deken
stephen.deken@gmail.com
Q. What happened with the drive? I thought DriveSavers was the best.
A. I had a long conversation with the engineer that worked on the drive. What happened was that the read heads slipped slightly out of alignment and began what is known as ‘head skip,’ which means that the heads skipped along the platters like a stone across water. Each time they hit the platters, they destroyed a little bit of data (somewhere around 256 bytes). Because they were skipping, they were reading bad data, so the drive attempted to compensate by moving the heads away and back again, which caused the heads to skip into more areas, which the drive then attempted to read from, which moved the head and caused more damage. Given that the drive spins at 7200 RPM, a few hours worth of this type of treatment just completely hosed the drive. DriveSavers was able to get ‘fragments of files,’ but they were not able to recover anything substantial at all. The physical damage was just too extensive.
Friday, February 24th, 2006
10:42 pm
The Final Update.
The site has been updated.
I’m sorry.
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
8:56 am
Current Status
So here’s the word from DriveSavers: the drive has physical damage, but not anything really scary — no gouges or scratches or broken parts. What they’ve primarily run into so far is areas of the platters which have less magnetic media than they should. This isn’t necessarily bad — hard drives are built to work around those sorts of areas (bad sectors) — but it could be an indication that a read head was rubbing up against the platter.
They should have a better idea of what the prognosis is on Friday. We should be back online by the end of next week. Again, I’ll keep you informed as I learn more.
Sunday, February 19th, 2006
9:34 am
Frequently Asked Questions
There is now a FAQ up, so that everyone can hate me in a fully educated and informed way.
Thanks!
Thursday, February 16th, 2006
5.56pm
Donations still needed
I’m not very good at this whole ‘business’ thing, apparently.
It’s been recently pointed out to me that although we’ve raised the money to do the data recovery, we still need funds to cover the following things:
1. Bandwidth for this month (which will be light, naturally) and the next few months
2. Hardware upgrades (RAID controller, new hard drives)
3. Normal operational costs (co-location) for the next few months
This reason for the ‘next few months’ part is that, with the Plus! subscriptions being given to those who donated, and with this massive extended downtime, the rate of Plus! subscriptions is going to fall for a while.
So, the point is, it was a mistake for me to imply that no more donations were necessary. Your donations will still help Diary-X get back onto its feet.
Update — I just remembered I’ve got mugs and buttons and patches that have been laying around forever that I can get rid of now 
$25 or more gets you a set, so if you’d like one, please chip in. If you’ve already donated $25 or more, you’ll still get these if you want them.
Thanks!
Stephen said:
Thursday, February 16th, 7:47 AM CST (GMT - 8:00)
I’m not sure why it took this long, but the drive was sent out at 11:58 AM PST (GMT - 10:00). The FedEx tracking number is 856030835151. It was not sent overnight as I had instructed, so it should arrive at DriveSavers on the 20th.
–
Stephen Deken
update:
Its in Oakland
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
10.34pm
Ok Please Stop Donating
We’ve got $1300 in the fund. Anything donated now just goes toward repairing my personal machine and saving up for a rainy Diary-X day. Site’s been updated.
$1300 in 24 hours — that’s definitely a record for Diary-X.
More to follow as it happens.
10.21am
The State Of Things As I Know It™ 2
The following has happened:
- The order for my new computer has been canceled in
lieulight of these events. [ed: I am retarded.] - We have raised, apparently, $900 since last night. Thank you all for your help — I was not relishing the thought of having to spring $1200. With the $1500 from the computer donations, we’ve got $2400, which is probably enough to cover the cost of the recovery. I can’t update the site from work, and several people have told me that I should not dare to remove the donation link until Friday, so it will stay up, but I’ll put a note saying that the money has been gathered and no further donations are necessary.
- The drive is being shipped out to the recovery company today.
- I have tickets open with our host to get a RAID array installed into the box, preferably RAID 5. I’m also asking them to make sure we have the data drive physically separated from the boot drive.
- Happy Valentine’s day. Do you like me? Check one [ ] Yes [ ] No
Monday, February 13th, 2006
9.44pm
Repairs Begin Tomorrow
The in-house techs finally got back to me (at 6:00 my time, just in time for me to get home and get dinner started, hooray!) and said, essentially, they’d tried everything they have the capability to try and they were unable to read the drive. So, now we have to ship it off to DriveSavers and see what they have to say about it. They are closed for the day, however, and we don’t have any shipping information or a tracking number, so I’m going to call them and arrange it first thing tomorrow morning.
When I called them earlier today, I told them it was a 40GB IDE drive, but it’s actually an 80GB SATA drive. I don’t know what the exact figures are for that specification — they have a sliding scale based on the amount of data they need to recover and the complexity of the recovery process — so I had to use the information I had.
I’m accepting donations at this time, at the behest of just about everyone. I still intend to cancel the order for the new computer, because it’s pointless for me to have a shiny new computer if there’s nothing for me to work on.
The site has been updated with a note explaining what the current status is and a link to donate via PayPal. Once we have a solid estimate from DriveSavers I’ll update the site with the final figure and/or stop donations if we’ve already got enough.
Everyone’s been so great. We’ll get through this one way or another.
9.36am
Current Status
I’m waiting for my contact at the data center to get back to me; I don’t know at this point whether they got the drive working or not.
I spoke to DriveSavers this morning and got a quote for the services which might be required. It will cost between $500 and $2700 for them to recover the data, depending on the scope of the damage. They won’t be able to give a more specific estimate until they recieve the drive and can inspect it, but the charges will not exceed the $2700 figure. I also spoke to Apple and confirmed that I can cancel the order for the machine at any time until it ships, which is estimated to be on the 22nd.
So at this point it’s a waiting game. The drive can almost certainly be recovered, it’s just a question of how long it will take and how much it will cost.
As always, I’ll keep you updated.
–sjd;
Sunday, February 12th, 2006
9.54pm
Status Update
To prevent the same questions from being asked multiple times, here is the Current State Of Things As I Know It™:
1. The hard drive that held all of Diary-X has failed. This means that all journal entries, templates, images, forum posts, user information, and everything else is on a hard drive that is no longer functional. This does not mean that the data is no longer THERE — just that it’s trapped on a hard drive which does not work.
2. We cannot restore from a backup because the last backup performed was in December 2004. (Of course, we could restore from that backup, but merging any changes made since then with changes made after then would get too confusing too quickly.) The fact that backups were not performed is entirely my fault; I disabled them.
3. It is possible that the data can be recovered. The drive is physically in good condition (not burned, broken in two, or otherwise obviously damaged), so it may be possible to have it repaired. Currently, technicians are working on recovery in-house in the data center. If they cannot recover the data in-house, the drive will be sent to DriveSavers, a dedicated recovery facility. It could be tied up there for two weeks or more, depending on what the problem is.
4. You must prepare yourself for the possibility that the drive is damaged beyond repair and that all of the journals which were once hosted on Diary-X are gone. Like you, I hope that this is not the case. I have nine years of data stored on that hard drive, and Diary-X is only a part of it. I promise you that I’m going to do everything in my power to recover it completely.
5. I just ordered a new development machine using money that was contributed by the users. If we need to have the drive recovered using DriveSavers, I intend to cancel this order. The greater need right now is to get Diary-X back online, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask for more money after having taken advantage of your kindness to buy myself a new computer.
I think that’s all; I’ll update this with answers to other questions if necessary.
–sjd;
3.45pm
Diary-X is DOWN (but not out)
A drive (on the actual real server, NOT on my personal development box) failed utterly without warning about four hours ago. Definition of irony: my personal drive, while still making sick noises, seems to be generally working fine. Go figure.
I have been informed that the boot drive is “completely hosed” and that they’re swapping it out for a new one. Please note that the journal data and all of the other mission-critical data is all stored on a different physical drive, and I’ve not heard any indication that there’s a problem with that drive. As far as I know right now, it won’t even be necessary to restore from backup.
If we do have to restore from backup, this could take several more hours to repair. I’ll keep you all informed.
The journal data was stored on the same physical drive as the boot partition. This means that everything is stored on the failed drive. See the next post for more details.
By the way, enough money was raised via begging to buy a new machine, which has already been ordered. It should be here by the end of the month.
I’ll keep you guys updated as to what’s going on.
–sjd;
