Data loss! What now?
Is there any chance of recovering lost ETH Weblog data posted between December 19 2007 and February 01 2008?
Below some suggestions which might be helpful for partial data recovery:
Internet data search:
- Via Google Cache
Google partially caches pages belonging to Google indexed blogs. Example: enter “site: blogs.ethz.ch/oas” in the Google search form and the search will be restricted to blogs.ethz.ch/oas. Continue in “advanced search” and restrict the date to a 1-2 month period. The result may be the missing blog entries. Instead of clicking on the link click on “cached”, there you should now be able to view your data. In particular, archive pages are cached. - Web Archive
The “Internet Archive” can be found at http://web.archive.org. Enter a URL to see all its’ existing versions. However, the web archive is more effective when going back 1 / 2 year and more. In our case, it is unfortunately not very useful but I decided to mention it anyhow.
Copy data from an RSS reader:
If you or any other person have an RSS feed subscription for your blog, you may be able to use information from the RSS reader to restore the missing data (Benjamin’s tip). You can even post a delivery request for your missing blog entries on your blog.
Data search on your own browser:
Since it is possible that you have viewed your own blog posts on your browser you might still find them in the cache if the browser cache has not been emptied since. Maybe you know someone who has viewed your page, and your site might still be in their cache. Depending on your settings, it’s possible that only images and CSS files are cached, in which case you will unfortunately not find anything.
- Firefox
To find cache data in Firefox enter “about: cache” in the URL box. Then click on List Disk Cache to view a list of all cache entries. Click on any entry to see the cache file’s name and location. We recommend using Strg + F (or Apple + F) to search for your blog. Enter URL incl. year e.g. blogs.ethz.ch/myblog/2008. Listed below are two cache readers as examples (there might be other better ones) - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_cache_viewer.html IE Win, Mozilla Win
- http://echoone.com/filejuicer/ Safari Mac (particularly for Mac OS X
Sooner or later every cache gets emptied or updated. If you want to try and save your data, you must do it now.
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in Blog Technology,Blog Tips