Somewhat panic-stricken, he contacted the Webmaster at the service he was using. My e-mail is gone too. It seems that all of this person s carefully filed e-mails about genealogy research have now disappeared and cannot be recovered. Keep in mind that computers will fail. A perfect computer has not yet been built.
All computers are subject to hardware failure, power surges, and human errors.
While online servers generally have sophisticated backup capabilities, nothing is guaranteed. You need to keep backups of important information on your own computer as well as online and on backup tapes or disks. You do not have to back up every bit and byte on your computer. Programs can be re-installed after a massive failure. Only the data is important.