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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > Apple lost my e-mails!

Apple lost my e-mails!
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dunhill85
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Jul 23, 2008, 02:13 PM
 
My e-mails disappeared during the migration from .Mac to .Me

My contacts in my address book are also missing.

Apple was able to recover 80% of my e-mails however the rest are still missing! Support claims that they are not responsible and that I should have backed up and synchronized my emails.

What do you think?
     
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Jul 23, 2008, 02:20 PM
 
If you were forced to migrate, then I would say the problem is their fault.
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Art Vandelay
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Jul 23, 2008, 02:21 PM
 
It sucks that they lost your data but you are responsible for maintaining your own backups.
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dunhill85  (op)
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Jul 23, 2008, 02:31 PM
 
I agree but shouldn't Apple take some responsibility? I wasn't given any notice that .Mac would be down for the migration.. I could not access my account for days!
     
Big Mac
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Jul 23, 2008, 03:03 PM
 
Are you sure it's still gone? One of my accounts was showing a fraction of the mail it should have contained in Mail, so I logged into webmail and verified everything was still there. A few minutes later the mail was restored in Mail.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
dunhill85  (op)
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Jul 23, 2008, 03:18 PM
 
It's gone. I don't use Mac Mail. I access everything through webmail.

This is the last e-mail that support sent me:

"I apologize that it took a little while to respond to you. As a result of the overwhelming interest in MobileMe, the MobileMe Support team is receiving higher volumes of email than normal.

I am sorry to hear that engineers did not recover everything you needed. I regret that what was already put in the RECOVERY folder is all that was available. No other messages are recoverable that you did not yourself have local backup of. It will be necessary to request senders resend any more recent emails that were not recovered, if possible."

I'm not satisfied with this reply
     
zro
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Jul 23, 2008, 03:34 PM
 
Gotta love how they coin it "overwhelming interest."
     
MacosNerd
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Jul 23, 2008, 03:37 PM
 
I wouldn't be satisfied by their answer as well. The emails where on their servers they have a responsibility to you as a paying customer.
     
Big Mac
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Jul 23, 2008, 03:47 PM
 
Yeah, Apple's support of MobileMe leaves a lot to be desired. I couldn't even find a support email address.
( Last edited by Big Mac; Jul 23, 2008 at 04:04 PM. )

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Art Vandelay
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Jul 23, 2008, 03:50 PM
 
What are you expecting? If that's all they were able to recover from their server failure, that's all there is to it. Bitching and moaning isn't going to miraculously make more data salvageable from a failed drive.
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Big Mac
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Jul 23, 2008, 04:08 PM
 
I think that's off-base, Vandelay. If companies want us to trust them with our data being placed on their servers, one would hope that they would build a lot of redundancy into the system. This problem obviously occurred because of the botched MobileMe transition, and I would be terrifically pissed if my mail had been lost.

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Atheist
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Jul 23, 2008, 05:03 PM
 
Yeah... but this is Apple we're talking about! We're not supposed to care if their stuff works... just that it looks good!
     
dunhill85  (op)
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Jul 23, 2008, 05:03 PM
 
Wahhhh wahhhh wahhh my emails are gone I HATE APPLE I HATE APPLE I HATE APPLE

Vandelay, you wanted to hear bitching and moaning didn't you?

I waited 6 days for Support to reply to my last email and I waited in vain. This has been going on for 2 weeks. Wouldn't you be upset too? 1/4 of my emails are still floating around somewhere. Don't I deserve to get it all back? I created this thread for advice. What are my options? Who is the right person to contact to resolve this because I don't think these Apple engineers are taking my case seriously? If anyone knows I would really appreciate it
     
Big Mac
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Jul 23, 2008, 05:18 PM
 
Email Steve's staff: [email protected].

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zro
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Jul 23, 2008, 05:34 PM
 
Originally Posted by Art Vandelay View Post
What are you expecting? If that's all they were able to recover from their server failure, that's all there is to it. Bitching and moaning isn't going to miraculously make more data salvageable from a failed drive.
Well, no ****.

But "bitching and moaning" about a well paid provider's **** up just might keep it from happening again.
     
besson3c
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Jul 23, 2008, 06:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by Art Vandelay View Post
It sucks that they lost your data but you are responsible for maintaining your own backups.
Those would have done little to no good. The second he resynced with his IMAP server, the old caches he had saved would have been deleted since his client would simply assume that those messages were deleted from the server.

All a mail client like OS X Mail does is cache messages for offline viewing. This is not a backup.
     
besson3c
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Jul 23, 2008, 06:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by dunhill85 View Post
I agree but shouldn't Apple take some responsibility? I wasn't given any notice that .Mac would be down for the migration.. I could not access my account for days!
You'd think that for the money you are paying that Apple would backup your stuff, but if this isn't specifically listed as a service they provide, they technically are off the hook.

The moral is, don't trust your important email with any provider that does not perform backups. This includes GMail and all of the free email services.
     
besson3c
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Jul 23, 2008, 06:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by Art Vandelay View Post
What are you expecting? If that's all they were able to recover from their server failure, that's all there is to it. Bitching and moaning isn't going to miraculously make more data salvageable from a failed drive.
True, but no backups and what is evidently a very flimsy/non-existence disaster recovery plan for a paid service like this is unacceptable, and Apple should be subject to criticism. This is why engineers/admins build redundancy into their systems.
     
64stang06
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Jul 23, 2008, 07:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by dunhill85 View Post
I agree but shouldn't Apple take some responsibility? I wasn't given any notice that .Mac would be down for the migration.. I could not access my account for days!
You do read websites, right? It's been all over Mac news and rumor sites that .Mac was transitioning to MobileMe and would be down. Unfortunately, their specified time frame wasn't meant (naturually). Hell, even logging into www.mac.com before the transition showed the scheduled timeframe. There was even information on the .Mac blogs that you would need to do final syncing before the transition.

As for contacts, Address Book has a built-in feature to backup the database, same with iCal. Email is different, of course, so that part should rest with Apple in a way.

But to say you had no notice seems to be rubbish.
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Art Vandelay
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Jul 23, 2008, 07:08 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Those would have done little to no good. The second he resynced with his IMAP server, the old caches he had saved would have been deleted since his client would simply assume that those messages were deleted from the server.

All a mail client like OS X Mail does is cache messages for offline viewing. This is not a backup.
Exactly. Where did I mention that the OP rely on the above as a backup?
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besson3c
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Jul 23, 2008, 07:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by Art Vandelay View Post
Exactly. Where did I mention that the OP rely on the above as a backup?
It sucks that they lost your data but you are responsible for maintaining your own backups.
What sort of backups did you have in mind?
     
Art Vandelay
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Jul 23, 2008, 07:48 PM
 
The simplest is to copy your email to a local mail folder in whatever mail client you're using. Another method is to backup your mail client data store. There are simple ways of restoring client data stores and syncing them back up to the server.
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besson3c
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Jul 23, 2008, 08:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by Art Vandelay View Post
The simplest is to copy your email to a local mail folder in whatever mail client you're using. Another method is to backup your mail client data store. There are simple ways of restoring client data stores and syncing them back up to the server.
Sure, but to me a manual backup is barely deserving of the name. How many people regularly and diligently perform manual backups of their email, or anything for that matter? Of this population, what are the chances that somebody would have manually backed up shortly before the outage?

Maybe I'm just too much of a geek for being this dismissive of manual backups... *shrug*
     
mduell
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Jul 23, 2008, 08:31 PM
 
You didn't back up your data and you lost your data... duh?
     
MacosNerd
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Jul 23, 2008, 08:46 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
You didn't back up your data and Apple lost your data... duh?
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Art Vandelay
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Jul 23, 2008, 08:51 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Sure, but to me a manual backup is barely deserving of the name. How many people regularly and diligently perform manual backups of their email, or anything for that matter? Of this population, what are the chances that somebody would have manually backed up shortly before the outage?

Maybe I'm just too much of a geek for being this dismissive of manual backups... *shrug*
I also mentioned backing up the mail client's data store, which can easily be done automatically via Time Machine or any other mechanism.
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besson3c
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Jul 23, 2008, 09:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by Art Vandelay View Post
I also mentioned backing up the mail client's data store, which can easily be done automatically via Time Machine or any other mechanism.
And like I said, that would have done little good since the mail client just stores a cache. Time Machine would dutifully put the email back in the directory it belongs, the user would sync with their IMAP server and this data would be lost. I suppose you could extract the lost messages and send them back to yourself, copy them to another IMAP account or something, but this is definitely not terribly intuitive.

The bottom line is that the very design of IMAP revolves around these backups being done on the server. Therefore, it makes the most sense by far for the onus to fall on the people running the servers to backup data. Perhaps it would be prudent to find ways to keep a copy of your email with a service as shoddy as Apple's or with a free service, but you'll excuse me if I don't critique people for not doing this. I would critique them for relying on a system without server-side backup before I got into this.
( Last edited by besson3c; Jul 23, 2008 at 09:34 PM. )
     
MacosNerd
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Jul 23, 2008, 10:07 PM
 
Besson's correct,
Because the whole architecture of IMAP and leaving emails on the server, it makes little sense to try to save the cache or data store because once it syncs your email messages would be gone. The only alternative is to manually download the emails, which go against the grain of having IMAP.

We're paying apple for a service which also includes storing emails, its not out of the question to expect them in providing the service to include backups. I have my own domain that's hosted by medialayer, they provide backups and at times, I've needed to request a restore. That's why I'm paying them, to store and protect my data.

No matter how you slice it, 99 dollars for the mobile me needs to include apple backing up data, especially when they strongly market the whole cloud paradigm, if the cloud loses the data, that loss will be pushed to every device - its imperative they take normal precautions.
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besson3c
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Jul 23, 2008, 10:44 PM
 
Maybe the cloud is sad?
     
SeSawaya
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Jul 23, 2008, 11:29 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Maybe the cloud is sad?
it's raining ....or worse....snowing!!!!
     
MacosNerd
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Jul 24, 2008, 08:13 AM
 
The cloud is definitely raining - here in boston, rather its down pouring. We are getting very florida like weather right now.

Back on topic, I kept my .mac (now .me) account because its so closely tied to my itunes and other things. As noted, I have my main account and I'm at a point now where I see little benefit in keeping the .me account. I've gotten better service from medialayer for nearly the same price. While the storage provided by medialayer is less then .mac, accessing the files is an order of magnitude faster. The iDisk is slow

Too bad, I gave apple every opportunity, but so far their .mac/.me product is lacking.
     
besson3c
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Jul 24, 2008, 10:31 AM
 
no backup = a non-starter for me.
     
Laurence
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Jul 24, 2008, 07:44 PM
 
I am usually a supporter of Apple and think people whine about many unimportant things, however if Apple really doesn't have all the data backed up multiple times at multiple locations across multiple continents then they really have no idea how to run an web portal, really not even an email server.

I work at a company with maybe 20,000 employees and I know that our email is backed up from the servers every night. This involves transferring a tremendous amount of data to offices across the world nightly and our mail servers handle it just fine. Apple has no excuse for something like this. All the .Mac mail/address book, pictures, iDisk, etc. is a lot of data, but it should be backed up daily (maybe even hourly) to multiple locations.

The continuing issues with the me.com transition are looking more and more likely to end up with a class action lawsuit as the result.
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Mr. Anderson
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Jul 24, 2008, 09:37 PM
 
Apple didn't run Time Machine on the MobileMe mail server.
     
besson3c
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Jul 24, 2008, 11:48 PM
 
Yeah, Apple's secret version of Time Machine for SANs
     
Randman
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Jul 25, 2008, 12:40 AM
 
Pogue's NYT column on mobilemess has many reports of this. All you can try is pester Apple to see if any can be recovered.

This is a computer-generated message and needs no signature.
     
jasong
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Aug 2, 2008, 06:08 PM
 
Wait, are you missing email that you had received before the transition, or missing email that would have arrived during or shortly after?

As for your recourse, your only option is to switch to someone else and send Apple a calm and polite email explaining why. Seriously, there isn't a single person on MacNN who can help you get your email back.
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chris v
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Aug 2, 2008, 09:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by Mr. Anderson View Post
Apple didn't run Time Machine on the MobileMe mail server.
Well, they did, but they were syncing to a time capsule over a wireless network.

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