I will take the responsability for this one.
We have backup routines built into the game and the forums. We disabled them because of a performance issue related to the size of the main game months ago. Was it the right thing to do? At the time yes but using an alternative was something we kept putting off as other things were more important.
The game is a hobby for us, a hobby that has taken on a life of its own.
One we definately enjoy.
I should have made a backup of all the databases before we moved. I did backup the main server to cd but not the databases.
I admit that I was in a hurry and forgot. It came back to bite us in the butt.
I upgraded the version of WebMin running on the game servers the day before we moved them and there is a fantastic filesystem backup utility included in the package. I should have enabled this but at the time things were a little harried.
We now have multiple daily backups being made to different locations. There is only one that puts a noticable load on the server and it happens at 9am GMT.
You have no idea how pissed off I have been the last 24 hours. I spent atleast 8 hours straight working on recovering the databases and getting everything back up and running again. And I still have more work to do in the forums as I have t0 recover a bunch of private/hidden data. We have learned our lesson.