Sidekick users: All your data are belong to /dev/null (Update 2)

by Steve Ragan - Oct 13 2009, 02:03

Update 2:

T-Mobile has issued the promised update on the forums. They report that, "We have made significant progress this past weekend, restoring services to virtually every customer. Microsoft/Danger has teams of experts in place who are working around-the-clock to ensure this stability is maintained."

However, the more important part for some came at the end of the update.

"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 statement said.

"This card can be used towards T-Mobile products and services, or a customer’s T-Mobile bill. For those who fall into this category, details will be sent out in the next 14 days – there is no action needed on the part of these customers. We however remain hopeful that for the majority of our customers, personal content can be recovered."

Update 1:

T-Mobile has not issued the status update that was promised for today. However, it is just now about 5:00 p.m. in California (8:00 p.m. EST), so there is still time.

The 200 page forum thread with tips, stories, complaints, and suggestions was deleted about five minutes ago. Due to this, the link in the original article to T-Mobile’s forums will not work. The new thread is here.

The “Epic thread” has been lost according to a moderator because, “…the site's software has exceeded some type of automatic limit.”

Also, this post contains details about contacts being returned.

Original Article:

Sidekick users are feeling a great sense of loss thanks to a systems failure. The outages started on October 2, causing T-Mobile Sidekick customers to lose access to all data including contacts, calendar entries, photos and more.

At first, there was hope of a restore, but all those hopes were dashed on Saturday as T-Mobile told customers in no uncertain terms to expect the worst and hope for the best.

Little is known about the cause of the data loss. There is speculation that a SAN update caused the failure, but neither Microsoft nor T-Mobile will confirm this. What is certain is that the hardware failure cost a good number of Sidekick users access to email, contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists and photos. While some users are reporting that lost email was restored, the T-Mobile and Danger forums are lit with customers discussing their losses, expressing worry about the Sidekick, anger at Microsoft, and confusion.

The confusion comes from the rolling updates. On October 5, Danger reported that,” IM services and access to social networking applications are now being restored along with Web browsing. The Address Book, Calendar, and other features are available as well. Do not remove or 'hard reset' your device, doing so may cause Address Book and Calendar information to be lost. We expect e-mail service and back-up of user data to be restored today. Some richer data services, such as new purchases from the Catalog, may take longer to enable.”

As time moved on however, things got worse, and data restores seemed to slow to a crawl, with some users getting a few items back, but contact lists and calendar information were still missing. Then over the weekend, T-Mobile and Microsoft issued a statement and advice. The statement confirmed some customer’s worst fears, and the advice warned Sidekick users not to, “remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.”

However, some customers complained that T-Mobile sales reps were using hard resets on their handsets to attempt to fix the problem. If the advice from T-Mobile is a method to help enable data recovery, some of the customers who were helped by the sales reps might be up the creek without a paddle.

In the statement on Saturday, the companies said, “T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption.”

“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.”

Then again, helpful sales reps or not, all Sidekick users might be up the proverbial creek.

T-Mobile said that Sidekick customers can expect an update on Monday (October 12), regarding the status of the remaining issues caused by the hardware failure, including updates to the recovery efforts.

“We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers' personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer. We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost,” the statement on Saturday concluded.

Communication from T-Mobile has been solid, considering the massive hit suffered. They have taken both positive comments and the negative ones with a smile, and aside from a few forum posts being removed for one reason or another, they are allowing the Sidekick community to vent and share information.

Another thing this outage has caused, aside from the Sidekick community’s feeling of hopelessness, is conversations about storage and backup recovery plans. This event will cause some storage vendors to rush to the media and explain how this could be prevented with one solution or another.

Nik Cubrilovic from TechCrunch said it best over the weekend, “Research companies will rub their hands together as they prepare new 80 page whitepapers with titles such as "How Companies Who Pay Us Money Can Prevent Your Data Being Lost" (complete with FDA "may cause drowsiness" warning label on the cover). Consultants will flock to their customers, pat them on the head, and reassure them that everything is ok because their project specification PowerPoint shows that they included two of everything (and charged for it).”

For now, the cross your fingers method of recovery is the only hope Sidekick users have. In a related note, the Sidekick has been blocked from sale online. Currently, T-Mobile has listed them all as, "Temporarily Out of Stock".

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