Infinity help, my website is suddenly down, it showed an error, said “error establishing a database connection”, when I checked on phpmyadmin, my database is GONE!, can you help me to restore it please, thank you
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Hey there, have you checked your database credentials? and can you please elaborate the issue?
Yes, it worked fine for weeks, but today the database is totally gone for this website, but for the other website database is still fine
The worst part is that I forgot to make a backup 
, that’s why i asked Infinity if it’s possible to restore my database, I’m not sure what’s going on, but so far I think there might be someone cause it
It’s not possible to restore a deleted database if you don’t have a backup, so I’m sorry to say you’ll have to start again and that you should learn from that mistake.
if it was deleted it’s not possible to restore.
Oh no, don’t say that, it breaks my heart, oh my goodness
I was searching on this stuff and I found that the host can have an automatic backup system for users, so my database might be there, Could you please investigate this possibility? @Admin
InfinityFree does not have an automated backup system. Mainly because the server power and storage needed to fund that is too high for a service that you don’t page for.
Well, gladly it’s not something I page for, because my database has gone unexpectedly from the server which is a crucial security issue
Also, I initially assumed that every hosting provider would have a similar thing, like I had before, if it’s not available, at least I highly recommend having a reminder for users to back up their database manually, This way, we can restore our data in case of unexpected issues like this.
Have you found out how your database was deleted? Are you sure it’s a security issue? And are you sure that security issue is an issue on our end? A security issue in your website code could also enable an attacker to delete your database.
To be clear, I don’t know what happened to your database. But I cannot take responsibility for something for which I have no evidence to suggest that we caused it.
If your proof is “I didn’t do it, so it must be you”, then please understand that we believe the exact same in the opposite direction. But the truth is that we can’t prove anything. And unless you can prove that we did do this, the fact is that we just don’t know what happened.
As you have discovered, you assumed incorrectly. You would do well next time to verify such assumptions before putting blind trust in it.
Also, a hosting provider making backups doesn’t mean all data you want is available at all times. Backups can be corrupted, deleted, lost, impossible to restore, expired, outdated or made inaccessible to you. The only way to be certain is to have you own backups.
And while I can understand that you would like to have known this beforehand, I see the the “you should have made this clear when signing up” a lot. If we did that every time, there would be multiple pages of “things you absolutely must know”. And let’s be honest, nobody would read that. It usually works better to provide the right information when needed, and not just dumping everything on people from the start.
I haven’t figured out what happened to it either. I can assure you that I didn’t delete it. It was there last week, but now it’s gone.
Regarding the proof you mentioned, how can I record any activity related to my database ?, I don’t have a database CCTV, and that’s why I’m asking you please investigate if possible, as the server administrator, you own the server, so you might have access to logs or system activity
That’s actually not true. Admin owns InfinityFree, but the server is owned and operated by InfinityFree’s hosting partner, iFastNet. What the admin can do with the database server directly is limited.
Perhaps, but that should be standard anyways. Even when a host does offer automatic backups, it’s more than possible for them to fail. So having your own manual backups is still recommended.
That makes sense now, thank you for clarifying the situation @EdwardHamHam, appreciate it
It’s frustrating because I didn’t delete the database myself, I’ve already requested an investigation, however, it seems they’re unable to assist with either the investigation of logs or restoration because of the limitation you mentioned, so it will mean nothing to keep the conversation
I’ll just focus on rebuilding my site
To prevent future data loss for others @Admin, especially for newbies, please provide users with a pop-up/infobox to back up their database in the dashboard as you don’t have the ability to restore the user database. Additionally, ensuring the security of your servers is crucial, who is accountable for data loss that users did not cause ?, I hope anyone who reads this will avoid similar situations in the future.
There might be some activity logging on the control panel, but as far as I know, it’s not so easy to analyze, and I doubt it will give a very clear answer on how the database was deleted. And even then, it won’t help bring the database back.