My school technology administrator just informed me that the server that ALL of the work I (and others) have done on Moodle has crashed and there is NO information that can be saved.
Is there ANY record or ANY way to access our sites via this site???
PLEASE HELP! I had 2 years worth of lesson plans, resources, tests, etc. on this!
Thanks,
Melanie Shepherd
Johnson Co. Voc. School
Mountain City, TN
Hi Melanie,
I think you're asking if there's any way you can access your data via the moodle.org site, in which case I'm afraid the answer is no - your Moodle installation wasn't uploading your data to the Moodle site (it would be a gross invasion of your privacy if it had been).
Ask your administrator if the server was being backed up to tape, or anywhere else, or if Moodle was running scheduled backups anywhere. If it was, then it should be possible to recover some or all of your data from there. If it wasn't, then someone is guilty of neglect of duty, because data should be being backed up regularly. That won't help you get your data back, but if your data wasn't being backed up then someone should get a kicking.
One other possibility - don't let the techies re-format or scrap the drive which Moodle was on, because there are specialist companies who can try and recover data from crashed disk drives. It's a bit expensive, we had to have a (non-Moodle) drive recovered a couple of years ago and it cost us about £350 (US$700), but depending on what happened to the drive someone MAY be able to get at least some of your data back for you.
Good luck!
Chris
If it's not clear what types the different files are he may be trying to open files as text which aren't actually text (try opening a picture file with a text editor and see what you get!). The files he's trying to open may be pictures, or database tables, or Word documents, or...
I'd be inclined to get authority from someone at your school to take the drive to a disk recovery specialist. I'm not quite sure how they do it, but they have some specialist machinery and techniques for reading scrambled data. Don't let your IT guys play with it any more - they've done enough damage already, and the more they mess with it the less your chances of getting the data recovered. Above all, DON'T let them try to defragment it or run scandisk/chkdsk.
If you can get your uploaddata folder (and its subfolders) and your database recovered then you should be able to nail them into a fresh installation of Moodle, or even if you just get your files back you can then upload them one at a time into a new installation.
The fact that your IT guy can get the disk to show something is encouraging - the drive clearly isn't completely dead, just badly corrupted. I think you need professional help with this now - have a look in your Yellow Pages under "Computer Disaster Planning", or something like that.
