Slashdot 10/11/09:
“T-Mobile’s popular Sidekick brand of devices and their users are facing a data loss crisis. According to the T-Mobile community forums, Microsoft/Danger has suffered a catastrophic server failure that has resulted in the loss of all personal data not stored on the phones. They are advising users not to turn off their phones, reset them or let the batteries die in them for fear of losing what data remains on the devices. Microsoft/Danger has stated that they cannot recover the data but are still trying. Already people are clamoring for a lawsuit. Should we continue to trust cloud computing content providers with our personal information? Perhaps they should have used ZFS or btrfs for their servers.”
Of course you can trust them. You just can’t count on them so have copies of anything you really need somewhere else.
What I don’t get is the part about the Sidekick loosing data when the battery dies?? Never used one, but I have had several smartphones, and they all stored data on flash. A dead battery was not an issue. Secondly, they all backed up to a PC.
Sounds like it’s a piece of crap to me.
CLOUD = Complete Loss Of User Data
lol I am so shocked to see that living in WA these two giants of the NW T-Mobile and Microsoft weren’t smarter to store their backups off site so as to avoid these types of issues.
I heard some big wig hollywood stars lost their contacts as well.
Thing is I had the Sidekick 4 years ago, as soon as I needed a serious phone for serious business contacts I switched to a Blackberry immediately. Anyone that stores valuable contacts on a sidekick deserve to lose their info, those phones were so shaky…