Another major data loss is showing that if you want to keep your data, its up to you to back it up. T-Mobile customers who have a sidekick phone are being told this weekend that they shouldn’t turn off their cell phones. If they do they will loose their address book data and anything else saved on the phone. Apparently there are some major data center problems going on over at Danger (the folks who make the Sidekick) and the Sidekick relies very heavly on the servers in the Danger data center. Apparenly there have been problems going on for a couple of days now. So far there’s no planned update from T-Mobile until Monday.
The problems are serious enough that T-Mobile has suspended the sale of the phone, and posted a very serious notice on there forums “Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.”.
This is just another indicator that you need to be responsible for backing up your data. You also need to know how your devices work. Personally I have a blackberry and it is synced up with my Exchange server. I know that if something happens to my Exchange server, I know that my local copy is fine. Same goes if there is a problem with RIMs servers.
Don’t rely on your service provider to backup your device, if you want to keep your data back up the data your self. If your phone provider doesn’t offer a way to back it up, check on the internet. Most cell phone models have some way to back them up so that you don’t loose everything if something goes wrong.
Denny
One Response
Great post Denny. Thanks for not saying “Cloud computing fail!” It was rather refreshing …
Now I just wish more web services, phones, etc. would make it easier to do backups and exports.