Check Your Astrobin

[Freddie]

Looks like there are big problems with Astrobin. Anyone lost any images?

[Adreneline]

Apparently all of them! I’m sure it won’t be permanent - a gremlin in the system. 
 

Update. They’ve all gone and will need to be uploaded again. Oh well 😔 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Adreneline
Update

[Star101]

I'm sure its just a glitch.

In this day and age, systems are backed up regularly. Even if the system crashed and drowned in the floods. There should be a off site backup somewhere. I'm not worried

Thinking about it. Its a weekend. Probably a system update that is slowing everything down and causing this issue. Give it a couple of days and it will sort itself out.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Star101

[Adreneline]

15 minutes ago, Star101 said:

In this day and age, systems are backed up regularly.

I share your optimism however the site owner has posted a message saying it is a “catastrophic loss of data” and images will need to be uploaded again.  He’s already offering free upgrades to those affected. I feel sorry for the guy - he seems distraught. 🙁

[Star101]

2 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

I share your optimism however the site owner has posted a message saying it is a “catastrophic loss of data” and images will need to be uploaded again.  He’s already offering free upgrades to those affected. I feel sorry for the guy - he seems distraught. 🙁

Yeah, I just read that. I would like to think that he has backups from a week ago, if not the last few days. Not that I use AB as storage of my images but knowing of businesses using severs, its good practice to have full backups at all times. Don't rely on RAID. 

I recall something similar happened a while back. Images disappearing. After a couple of weeks, everything started working again. I think that was some sort of syncing after an outage or update. 

Don't get me wrong. I do feel for the guy. He just needs some time to figure the problem out and sort it. I do read some others offering their assistance too.

[PeterCPC]

Most of my thumbnails are missing but the actual images are still there if you click on the thumbnails. Strange.

Peter

[fireballxl5]

58 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

Most of my thumbnails are missing but the actual images are still there if you click on the thumbnails.

Same here so not so bad🙂

[carastro]

I have 86 of my 183 images on there affected.  All but 9 the images are there but the thumbnails are gone (at least when i checked last night that was the case).  the remaining 9 have disappeared altogether.

I am waiting to see whether the data can be restored before I attempt re-uploading, and I have most images on my back up drives.  But it will be a lot of work, plus all the images on my own website are hosted from Astrobin, and they've all disappeared too so i shall have to do the job twice over.

Quote

 share your optimism however the site owner has posted a message saying it is a “catastrophic loss of data” and images will need to be uploaded again.  He’s already offering free upgrades to those affected. I feel sorry for the guy - he seems distraught. 

Agree with this.  I think any-one who has totally relied on Astrobin for data storage and doesn't have backups only has themselves to blame for permanent loss.  

This is one of the reasons why I had a book printed of my images last year as an extra precaution.

Carole 

 

[Star101]

9 minutes ago, carastro said:

This is one of the reasons why I had a book printed of my images last year as an extra precaution.

Carole 

 

Same here, Carole. I keep the images I posted on AB and decided to put the best images, each year, in a photo book. They make great coffee table items.

[carastro]

Well I have just found and uploaded 5 of the lost images.  The ones where the thumbnails are missing are fairly easy, you just have to edit and refresh the thumbnails.

I'll do a few a day so it is less of a chore.  Leave my own website until after Astrobin is restored. 

Carole 

[ollypenrice]

What a pain. I'm even sorrier for the owner than I am for the rest of us! I think I'll wait for a miracle recovery for a while before deciding on whether or not to reload my pictures. Our internet isn't fast so that would be a tedious job.

Will the day of reliable IT ever dawn?

Olly

[carastro]

Well I have reinstated 5 images.  These are images on my back up drive from 2011.  

It is a pain, but the site is too good to abandon I am sure Salvatore will make double and triple sure this doesn't happen again.  

Carole 

[ApophisAstros]

11 minutes ago, carastro said:

Well I have reinstated 5 images.  These are images on my back up drive from 2011.  

It is a pain, but the site is too good to abandon I am sure Salvatore will make double and triple sure this doesn't happen again.  

Carole 

The problem is that from his description   he is yet to know what has happened!

Robert

[gorann]

Just read a message Rodd @Rodd sent me after I went to bed last night - he says 90% of his images on Astrobin have been lost and when I look at his page that may be true. I worry that he may not have backup for them all - I know he had a hard drive dying about a year ago. My situation seems a bit better, with maybe 30% lost but it is hard to tell since the site is now very slow and many thumbnails just show an hour glass. I will sit and wait until Salvatore tells us that they are indeed totally lost. Because I have 340 images there, even a 30% reload will be a lot of work. Good thing is that the image info should still be there and many of my poor early versions will no longer be there as an eternal hall-of-shame🥴. I do have all images on at least two separate hard drives.

Of course, I feel more sorry for Salvatore than me. I hope this does not mean that a lot of people abandon the site.

[carastro]

The thumbnails missing are easy to restore.  Just done 10 of those as well.

I think quite a few people are threatening and leaving, it's such a shame that some people don't have a bit of patience and understanding.  They should have kept their own back ups, mine are on back up drives. 

Carole 

[gorann]

6 minutes ago, carastro said:

The thumbnails missing are easy to restore.  Just done 10 of those as well.

I think quite a few people are threatening and leaving, it's such a shame that some people don't have a bit of patience and understanding.  They should have kept their own back ups, mine are on back up drives. 

Carole 

Well, let us hope that those who stay are those of us that count! I trust that Salvatore will do everything to assure that this cannot happen again.

Edited February 17, 2020 by gorann

[PeterCPC]

19 minutes ago, carastro said:

The thumbnails missing are easy to restore.  Just done 10 of those as well.

How?

Peter

[Z3roCool]

Looks like my only 2 images are gone also. Not a bad thing! 

Feel really bad for this guy...I work in I.T and backups are a massive thing that is sadly overlooked by many. Site looks good but guessing a database in the background has died, or even worse hardware failure. If the disks have gone and no backups then data will probably be gone. If just a database failure then could stand a possibility of getting data back. The fact you can upload still and it works sounds like a database problem so keeping fingers crossed.

[geoflewis]

As I just posted on AB site, all my images are currently missing and so far I have not been able to restore any by the 'flag thumbnails' option, but I have only tried a handful, some recent and other older ones chosen at random. Each time I get the message, 'We are very, very sorry, but it appears that your image suffered a catastrophic data corruption, and it cannot be retrieved.....'

I will wait and hope for better news from Sal before trying any more.

 

[gorann]

Just realized that my avatar was not showing so I uploaded it again - easily done.

Many of my images just show a question mark as thumbnail and no image come up if I chose it. So I uploaded a new one for one of them, and suddenly the old version appeared.... So a question mark may not mean that it is lost.

[gorann]

All may not be lost! I just found that when clicking on some of my sad face thumbnails and then go to Edit basic infomation and just go down to the bottom and press Save, restored the image and everything!

[Z3roCool]

It looks to be a linking issue from the Front End (Website) to Amazon's data. Hopefully if they contact him to go through they can sort.

[geoflewis]

17 minutes ago, gorann said:

All may not be lost! I just found that when clicking on some of my sad face thumbnails and then go to Edit basic infomation and just go down to the bottom and press Save, restored the image and everything!

I've tried this, but so far no success. Under Edit Basic info I have to search for the image in my backup then save for it to be restored, but it is tricky to find the correct image for each revision as sometimes I have many versions in my back up, but maybe only Original + A + B on Astrobin, so trying to recall which of my revisions is A, B, etc., is not so easy. If I have to reload all of them, then probably I will end up with just final (and maybe original) versions, which will be sufficient for me.....

[gorann]

Just now, geoflewis said:

I've tried this, but so far no success. Under Edit Basic info I have to search for the image in my backup then save for it to be restored, but it is tricky to find the correct image for each revision as sometimes I have many versions in my back up, but maybe only Original + A + B on Astrobin, so trying to recall which of my revisions is A, B, etc., is not so easy. If I have to reload all of them, then probably I will end up with just final (and maybe original) versions, which will be sufficient for me.....

It has so far worked for all my "lost" images, so at least for me it seems to be a case of broken links. What I do is just to press the thumbnail, go to Edit Basic Information, I change nothing there but scroll down to the bottom and just press Save.

[carastro]

Quote

The thumbnails missing are easy to restore.  Just done 10 of those as well.

How?

If you click on the sad face and open up the image and find the image is there (but not the thumbnail).

Click on Edit at the top, and then Thumbnail.  Set the position of your thumbnail if you want to move it and click save.

Carole