Server crash wipes out Sidekick user data in US

Sidekick users in the US have been hit with what looks like a major catastrophe with the cloud-based storage side of the service — a severe server failure appears to have wiped out everyone’s data.

The announcement comes from manufacturer Danger (now owned by Microsoft) and mobile operator T-Mobile and follows a week of server glitches that prevented some owners from synchronising their Sidekicks with the cloud — an automatic process that’s one of the messaging device’s USPs.

More after the cut. 

There’s no news yet on how the service went from partially working to complete collapse (a problem with a server upgrade is the latest rumour), but more worrying is how there doesn’t appear to be a viable backup to get everyone’s data back. As the T-Mobile US site says:

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger's latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device - such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos - that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.

At the time of writing, the service is still down in the US and an update is expected today. Fortunately, the Sidekick’s storage isn’t completely cloud-based — it’s also kept on the device itself, which makes this bit of T-Mobile advice all the more pertinent:

Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.

The Sidekick didn’t make much of a splash in the UK and the sole mobile provider, T-Mobile , appears to have dropped it from its line-up.

The assumption is that cloud storage is completely safe, since it relies upon someone else’s servers that, we assume, are quadruply redundant and backed up every minute. As the infrequent outages with online services like Gmail illustrate though, the cloud doesn’t always have a silver lining and there’s no replacement for an up-to-date local backup of your data.