Wow. T-Mobile and Danger, the Microsoft-owned subsidiary that makes the Sidekick, has just announced that they’ve likely lost all user data that was being stored on Microsoft’s servers due to a server failure. That means that any contacts, photos, calendars, or to-do lists that haven’t been locally backed up are gone. Apparently if you don’t turn off your Sidekick and make sure its battery doesn’t run out you can salvage what’s currently stored on the device, otherwise you’re out of luck: Microsoft/Danger is describing the likelihood of recovering the data from their servers as “extremely low”.
T-Mobile Sidekick users have been suffering
from a major outage all week, and that issue apparently hasn’t been resolved either.
This goes beyond FAIL, face-palm, or any of the other internet memes we’ve come to associate with incompetence. The fact that T-Mobile and/or Microsoft Danger don’t have a redundant backup is simply inexcusable, especially given the fact that the Sidekick is totally reliant on the cloud because it doesn’t store its data locally. Microsoft acquired Danger for $500 million in February 2008.
Update:: There is some speculation that this was not actually caused by a server meltdown, but by Danger’s failure to make a backup before a Storage Area Network upgrade that was botched.
Yesterday some GREAT or slighly great news was announce yesterday
"Anyone who lost data during the recent Microsoft/T-Mobile Sidekick outage. While it initially appeared that user data may have been lost forever, T-Mobile issued a statement late yesterday saying, “Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible.”
It goes on to say, “In the event certain customers have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content, T-Mobile will be sending these customers a $100 customer appreciation card. This will be in addition to the free month of data service that already went to Sidekick data customers.”
The card can be used for T-Mobile products and services. The company has temporarily stopped selling Sidekick devices and has advised current owners to not allow their Sidekicks to reset or lose power."
**News Courtesy of Techcrunch.com**
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