Server crash, lost photos
 

Our server crashed on Friday. The site was on a temporary server at the time while our server was being upgraded (hardware). I was told that the temp server had I/O errors on the disk and that we needed to get the site moved off of it quickly so it didn't crash again. The crash required some database repairs. I didn't realize until after it was repaired and moved that there were a bunch of photos missing. Some photos were only days old, some were 4+ years old.

How could the photos have been lost? Aren't they stored in the file system? Is there something that could have gone wrong in the db to cause this? If anyone can give any help on this matter, I'd appreciate it. The host isn't being very helpful. And it seems the backup they have on file doesn't have the missing data.

vBGallery stores its files on the filesystem in folders on the harddrive. The name of the files, who they belong to and what category they are stored in is in the database.

Make sure your PATH's are correct in the Gallery settings.
AdminCP => vBGallery => Modify Settings

Sever paths to your data may have changed.

On the images in question, check out if those files are on the server.

The problem is, the files are gone. I don't know what they were named, only that they were there before and are not there now. How would I go about trying to find these files?

The path's are correct. I would assume if they weren't, none of the images would show up at all. That's not the case. There are a good amount of images there, but a good number are just missing.

How would I go about researching in the db? Is there a way to look up a user and see what files should be showing up for them?

vBGallery => Maintenance => Scan Database

This should give you a list of files in the database that have a problem and missing files.

DO NOT FIX - (this will be a button on the result page)
- if the files are put back on the server there should not be problems.

Thanks. I'll try that again. I actually did that earlier today and found that only about 15 files came up in the results, a fraction of the actual number of missing images. I guess they're just gone for good. Oh well.