My 'quick' website backup turned into a 3-day tech nightmare

I thought I'd be smart and move my freelance portfolio to a new host last Tuesday. The backup tool said 30 minutes max. It got stuck at 99% for 6 hours. I spent the next two days on chat support, trying every fix they suggested, including a weird command line thing that deleted my custom fonts. I finally got it working after 72 total hours of panic. Has anyone else had a simple task blow up their whole week?

4 comments

4 Comments

ross.sandra1mo ago

Oh man, that command line part is the real kicker. Did they at least warn you it might mess with your files, or did they just have you paste some code and hit enter without explaining what it would do? I've learned the hard way to never run a command if I don't understand each part of it.

evancarter1mo ago

Totally feel that, @ross.sandra. My buddy once followed a guide to free up disk space and ran a command that wiped his whole downloads folder. The guide just called it a "cleanup script" without any details. He lost a ton of work stuff and family photos that weren't backed up yet. Now he reads every single line in a terminal before hitting enter, no matter how long the tutorial is. That kind of thing sticks with you.

stella1111mo ago

What's the worst command you've ever run by mistake?

taylor.brooke3d ago

Remember my friend who answered @stella111's question by deleting his whole music library.