Data loss

[Heckate]

We have a database with 2 tables in it and over the weekend one of the tables lost all data in all fields in all records. The records themselves are still there, they are just empty. The client is running FMServer 7.0v2 on a G5 machine and FMP 7.0v3 on a mix of OS 10.2.8 and Windows XP machines. Restarting the server didn't do anything. No other databases appear to be affected and the server did not crash.

The data was there on Friday afternoon and gone on Monday morning. Nobody was working on the specific file over the weekend and only administrators have deletion ability.

Has this happened to anyone else? Any idea why it happend? This is a pretty serious bug in filemaker if we can't track the cause back to human error.

[Claus Lavendt]

Hi

This seems to be a corruption of your file. It can happen in several ways, but if someone have directly access to the file itself and tries to open it, that would cause such corruption.

The file could allso be corrupted before you went on serving it on the server. If filemaker pro or developer crashes while the file is open, (eg when you develop it) it could cause such corruption that happend to you.

You should stop the server, move the file to your machine, open in fm dev (or pro) repair the file, close it, open your backup copy of the file and import the data from the damaged file. Trash the damaged file after you have recovered the data, and put the other file on the server, start serving.

;-) Claus

[Fenton]

I have seen this same problem. The data was still there, you just couldn't see it. Recover got it back, and I imported that data into a clean clone. I don't know what exactly happened to cause the problem, as it was a client's file. Good luck.

[Heckate]

Hi, thanks for your replies. I tried recovering the file but it didn't work, i also tried cloning it and importing from the damaged file but that didn't work either. I've sent the db to filemaker and they think the server may have crashed while someone was in it. However i can't find any obvious indication of a crash. Is there a log statement i should be looking for or can i turn on an alert of some sort to tell me when the server has a problem.

The database has been served for about 4 months without problems and it's hidden so no-one can access it over the network.

We have managed to restore a backup but i'm scared it might happen again.