Hello. This is my first forum posting. I hope I'm in the right subcategory!

 In a nutshell, my problem is this: we found out yesterday that we've lost 10 months of data due to a server hard drive failure. (And, while I won't bore you with all the nitty gritty details, yes, we were backing up regularly. Suffice to say that there were problems with the backups and restoring from 10 months ago is the best we can do.)

My question(s) is/are: have any of you experienced a similar loss? If so -- my condolences -- where did you start in recreating the lost data? What were the priorities, what did you decide was essential to recreate, what did you determine you could live without? Basically, I'm looking for any advice, best practices, and/or protocols that folks who've been through this used in dealing with such a loss.

Maybe I should share that we're a social service agency. Prior to the server failure, we had approx. 11,000 records in our database. We processed in the neighborhood of 2,500 gifts last year; thankfully, we do have copies of the deposit reports and checks. We do use the RE event module for 3-4 fundraising events/registration annually. We sent around 8 mailings (of various sizes/segments, not always to the entire database), and we do use the RE reporting functions to track appeal results, etc.

Many thanks, in advance, for any suggestions, advice, etc. you can share!

Lisa Prentice, Development Administrator

Grand Rapids, Mich.

That would be very interesting, how would you recover the whole database.

I do have a suggestion.

Try to recover any data files that you exported from your database. I assume you have done some exports into text, csv or excel.

Then try to connect (link) all these files together into some temp database, MS-Access would be fine. Once you establish all the links and ID numbers in the temp database, create various import files consulting RE: Help.

Then do the imports into your RE database.

Once you have all the data in, try to run constituent, financial and any other reports to validate your data.

I hope this helps.

Lisa, I'm sorry to hear about your data loss. You may want to check out a similar thread from last year: http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/p/8718/30347.aspx#30347

I'd suggest contacting Donna (who started that thread) to see if she has any suggestions to share at this point.

Hope this helps!
Sarah

Thanks for your suggestion. I read that thread -- makes my loss seem much more manageable! (Misery truly does love company, doesn't it?) I'll touch base with Donna and see what suggestions she has. We've come up with a plan/recreation priorities at this point, but additional perspectives certainly won't hurt.

Thanks again,

Lisa