PSA: Server Hard Drive Failure

PSA
We have had some catastrophic news in relation to our server that is stored at a data centre in Reading, UK. Yesterday (30/12/2013) at about 4pm customers were reporting to us that their websites were not working and an ‘Internal Web Server’ error was occurring.
We looked into the issue from here, however was unable to reach our server’s control panel. We have asked the data centre team to look into this issue and they have reported this morning (31/12/2013) at 4.30am the main hard drive on the server has failed and is not responding.

What does this mean?
This means that all previously uploaded websites have been lost and are unreachable. We are devastated by this and are working hard to restore all customers websites immediately, however please note that this is a lengthy process and will take time.
If you have any questions in the mean time, please do not hesitate to contact [email protected]

Kind Regards,
Metserve Team Admin

** Update @ 4.34pm = We have started to restore customers websites. Those who had an active maintenance plan with us, we have local back up’s of your website. However, those who did not have such package, the server unfortunately kept back up’s on the same drive that failed. Those sites may be restored as a ‘design’ however the content may not be complete. Please check back later for further updates.

** Update @ 1.05am (01/01/2014) = A handful of websites have been restored from the parts of the drive we were able to recover. Other sites have unfortunately been destroyed. If you have been affected by this drive failure issue, and have noticed that parts / all of your website is missing, please forward what content you have to the above email address and we will try our best to help recover and rebuild your websites. We will pursue why this has happened with our server providers in the future, but in the mean time we are focusing on trying to restore whatever we can. Your patience, understanding and co-operation is greatly appreciated during this period.

** Update @ 12.30pm (01/01/2014) = We are nearing the end of customer website restoration. If your website does not appear online, or does not appear complete, then your site was lost during the hard drive failure. Please contact us for advice so that we can help you regain your website.