Ooops! Flickr

[irv_b]

To those of us with flickr accounts (I think that's nigh on everyone) I hope you have backed up all your precious shot cos this could easily happen to you

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/02/technology/flickr_deletes_account/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin

You have to feel for the guy but I am surprised that there is no safety net to retrieve his shots !

[Oldboy]

The whole point of a website run on servers is that recovery is build-in. If flickr can't recover these files, then how would it recover files if a disk fails on their servers, which must happen quite often? My guess is the flickr staff use the supersuper password when on the site thereby, when they delete something it deletes all reference to it, even on backups. Not the right way to run a system. 

[Colin]

I stopped using Flickr a while ago after their software api allowed anyone to rip-off images even those copyright protected on the site (allegedly these stop them being copied) and use them for anything. It seems to me that their "professional" IT staff are anything but. I can't see how they couldn't recover most of these images from a backup IF they have a proper backup strategy (which I doubt given what is said) or they just can't be bothered. This shows the importance of backups BUT it will take a long time to re-upload 4000 images. For me it would be time to move on to somewhere like Camera Craniums

[jinky]

I`d happily let them nuke mine and give me 25 years pro membership. Surely no-one uses flickr as a back up site to save images .
I only put lower res copies up nowadays and am aiming to put on less and less restricting it to challenges I do and the odd ones I want views / comments on or showing what I am up to.

With health issues lately I`ve not been shooting much but aiming to pick up now and get involved a bit more.

[Jonathan]

how would it recover files if a disk fails on their servers, which must happen quite often?

Well....

first of all it's a lot easier to recover a whole disk than an individual account.  "I can't recover the data" generally = "it would take too much effort to recover the data"
secondly there's a big difference between disk failure (covered by RAID and cloud based fallback) and deletion.  Back when I did this for a living we could take a direct hit from a bomb on our data centre (and yes, it actually happened...) but if one customer's details got deleted by an over enthusiastic operator there was little we would do to recover them - far FAR easier to recreate
thirdly why should they?  It's not an archive - it's a showcase.  It's not like you pay for multiple ancestor RAID backup with your account (scarily I know of pro photographers who back up all their images on Flickr in private galleries....)

[Hinfrance]

I use flickr as a backup backup, because it is the lowest cost way of storing so much data in 'the cloud'. As the article about this in El Reg pointed out, anyone who stores their only backup on any cloud based service is a moron. 

Reminds me of when Carbonite lost several thousand sets of client data when both the main and backup drives failed.

[Oldboy]

how would it recover files if a disk fails on their servers, which must happen quite often?

Well....

first of all it's a lot easier to recover a whole disk than an individual account.  "I can't recover the data" generally = "it would take too much effort to recover the data"
secondly there's a big difference between disk failure (covered by RAID and cloud based fallback) and deletion.  Back when I did this for a living we could take a direct hit from a bomb on our data centre (and yes, it actually happened...) but if one customer's details got deleted by an over enthusiastic operator there was little we would do to recover them - far FAR easier to recreate
thirdly why should they?  It's not an archive - it's a showcase.  It's not like you pay for multiple ancestor RAID backup with your account (scarily I know of pro photographers who back up all their images on Flickr in private galleries....)

Strange, as we had TMF, Transaction Monitoring Facility, on the mainframe, which allowed us to recover any file on the system throughout the day. TMF was dumped to tape every half hour or so, then main backups would be done overnight. We also had mirrored drives/CPU's, so if a disk crashed the mirrored drive would take over and the user wouldn't know anything had happened. To delete anything on a TMF dump you had to logon as SuperSuper. 

[picsfor]

Interesting how the views stack from those who have worked in the I.T. at differing times (the methods of back give the era away    )

Given the amount you pay for an annual account on Flickr and what you can do with it, i would have been surprised if it had bomb proof back up facilities. Also, i seem to remember reading some where that it warns against using FLickr as your back up point...

Deleting an account by mistake - this gets a bit more complicated and for the money we pay, well let's just say that whilst i can empathise with  the victim of this incident i'm not surprised by the outcome. They will en joy the "compensation" in much the same way as i am enjoying my compensation from when "Three Mobile" accidentally closed my account and gave away my number - they gave me a nice shiny £600 32gb iPhone4.

After the shock of it all, i'll bet said tog goes out and re-thinks their whole photographic strategy and how they want to lay out their pictures, who they want as a contact, what groups they want to be members of etc...

But this is the real scary part that has not been mentioned. As industry drives for ever cuts, and technology advances, so the increase in handing over once highly responsible positions to monkeys will increase and more of these mistakes will occur.  You've been warned!

[Jonathan]

Strange, as we had TMF, Transaction Monitoring Facility, on the mainframe, which allowed us to recover any file on the system throughout the day. TMF was dumped to tape every half hour or so, then main backups would be done overnight. We also had mirrored drives/CPU's, so if a disk crashed the mirrored drive would take over and the user wouldn't know anything had happened. To delete anything on a TMF dump you had to logon as SuperSuper. 

Um yeah.  But an IBM 3590 would hold about 90GB including compression (which probably wouldn't work so well for jpegs).  Flickr recently passed 5 billion images hosted.  That's a lot of tapes......

[spinner]

It's interesting to read the reactions from the former IT guys, as they are coming at this as photogs who're sympathetic to the victim. On the other hand, on some of the tech sites I visit they are comparing it to Facebook and how it's a positive, that when Flickr deletes, it, deletes as opposed to Facebook which keeps everything and just throws up and electronic veil of sorts. 

[Oldboy]

Um yeah.  But an IBM 3590 would hold about 90GB including compression (which probably wouldn't work so well for jpegs).  Flickr recently passed 5 billion images hosted.  That's a lot of tapes......

Google has special data centres set up all over the world, which store everything on the web that uses their search engine going back years. I bet that's more than the size of 5 billion images. If you think that's a lot then what about CERN's LHC experiments will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually – enough to fill more than 1.7 million dual-layer DVDs a year. 

[Jonathan]

Google has special data centres set up all over the world, which store everything on the web that uses their search engine going back years. I bet that's more than the size of 5 billion images. If you think that's a lot then what about CERN's LHC experiments will produce roughly 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data annually – enough to fill more than 1.7 million dual-layer DVDs a year. 

But why would they?  Flickr costs less than $2 a month (or free).  They have some nice features.  Why would they spend all of that on backing up my files?

[Delete my backup and it's your fault - delete my only backup it's my fault.]

[michaelb104]

But this is the real scary part that has not been mentioned. As industry drives for ever cuts, and technology advances, so the increase in handing over once highly responsible positions to monkeys will increase and more of these mistakes will occur.  You've been warned!

I've got to completely agree on this, currently where I'm working the knowledgeable and experienced people are being replaced by graduates.  This is great when all is going well but as soon as a problem occurs..................................

Look on the bright side, the company is saving a loads on wages, cannot deliver the service the client is paying for but just look at the bottom line figures