T-Mobile Warns Sidekick Data May be Lost — Timely Backup Reminder for All
T-Mobile has issued a warning that the ongoing, dare we say catastrophic failure of the Sidekick servers could result in permanent data loss if Sidekick users in any way reset their devices during the outage:
“Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.”
Scary, but also an urgent reminder to everyone who uses Cloud Services, including iPhone owners with MobileMe, Exchange ActiveSync, Google Gmail/Calendar, or any other, similar accounts.
Best practices dictate that data doesn’t exist unless it’s in at least three locations: local, local backup, and off-site backup. Cloud covers offsite (so does a duplicate drive at another location), but if any of your data is irreplaceable, even important, you need to make sure it’s backed up locally.
You can typically save emails, and export calendars and contacts. You can get cheap external hard drives and either manually copy your files over or get easy-to-use automatic backup solutions (some, like Shadow Copy for Windows and Time Machine for Mac are even built into the OS).
Storage is cheap, photos, videos, information, etc. can be priceless. Back it up now. If you need help or advice, check out TiPb’s iPhone Forums.
October 10th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
MobileMe, Kevin.
One good thing about MobileMe and iPhone is that you have your data 1. On the phone; 2. In your iTunes backup; 3. On MobileMe. This should cover it.
October 10th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
@Kevin You might want to actually read the entire post before you start bashing it and make yourself look like an idiot. Great post guys, thanks for the reminder to do my weekly backup.
October 10th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
@Louie
where did he bash it? I think he has a legit question/concern as many(including myself) often time skim paragraphs. The title of this post lays the foundation on T-Mobile and unless you disect this post efficiently…you might be left with the same question.
Asking why it’s on here wasn’t a bash at all. You might actually want to think before you make yourself look like an idiot…(at least before you try to be rude and plant 1 on someone else)
October 10th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
@Ted
Does nothing but unruly, uneducated teenage punks roam this site? Once again Rene…needs to be some kind of filter. The integrity of this post is dropping with every guy like Ted that posts
October 10th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
@SomeGuy:
Yeah, words like $exy are outlawed… but kids can call people morons, idiots, ignorant, etc. Baffling, isn’t it?
October 10th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
If you follow this story, as an iphone/apple fan, you will actually find it amusing and newsworthy
Basically the company that stores all sidekick data (Danger is their name) Was bought by M$ last year. While trying to upgrade/migrate their SAN into the M$ network they managed to literally loose all the sidekick users data. A classic example of why M$ is not even close to mobile market ready, and probably the death of the sidekick as a smart phone. From what i hear owners jumping ship in droves:)
October 11th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Too bad. I actually did enjoy using a sidekick. Way to go MS. I have 5 friends who are majrly pissed that that are still out their data and neither one of them give a **** about the free month of data. Most SK users that I know BARELY use their phones as an actual phone. They communicate by data features. So MS/Danger/TMobile you have cut off their nuts.
October 11th, 2009 at 1:45 am
I’ve been backing up my Gmail for a while now using Outlook locally and then having the pst files backed up to Amazon S3. I didn’t think to backup my contacts too…but that is now done thanks to this little reminder. Thanks guys.
October 11th, 2009 at 2:20 am
Uh oh… time to frequent another blog as it seems like tweens have become regular posters. Ichehuahua!
October 11th, 2009 at 7:35 am
@Kevin This is a website for iPhone-related discussion. Not a place for you to rant.
Guys, cut him some slack for his original post. If you’re one of those people who just skims paragraphs, he would be confused.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Urgh..
October 11th, 2009 at 8:08 am
Where is that Kevin’s post ????
October 11th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Comments were cleaned, please try to keep on topic, discuss the subject matter and not each other
October 11th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I can appreciate some good ol’ comment cleaning.
I wonder if data on your iPhone counts as one of the three locations. If your computer takes a dump, can you ever extract photos, etc from the phone?
October 11th, 2009 at 9:53 am
My buddy in NY is claiming that this morning he went in to a TMobile store with a copy of the TMO statement above (the full one) and demanded a manager compensate SK users beyond the BS month of free data. He says he was given 3 free months of service (phone, data, etc). They way he made it seem was that they are secretly now doing this for those who are still pissed. So if you know a SK user, pass it on. 3 months of free service.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I periodically backup Contacts, Calendar, and other stuff manually from the desktop apps to an external drive. So, I have backups of backups of backups.
@Rene:
Jeremy has a terms of use thing in the forums too that mentions people offending each other with name-calling wouldn’t be tolerated. But I don’t ever see these posts being deleted. Are there just far too many to keep up with, or is deleting comments just something TiPB would rather not do? I’ll take the job if you need a helping hand.
October 11th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
One of the risks of backups and syncing storage schemes is the risk of loss on one media being synced to other media causing the loss to be faithfully replicated to all of your backups.
Cloud computing is a poor substitute for cheap thumbdrives for backup. While is serves as a good solution for syncing, the cloud is a risky place for backups.
I still hope Apple will allow wifi backup AND syncing in some future release. The necessity to cable up just to backup is a deterant.
And I second fastlane’s nomination.
October 12th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Could it be that Microsoft/Danger was really using Snow Leopard all along:
Snow Leopard bug DELETES users data: (apple insider):
http://tinyurl.com/yz8nred
October 14th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Does anybody know if T Mobile is letting people out of their contracts because of this?