File contents mysteriously removed using FTP

Posted by Matt Thommes on January 6, 2010 | Post type: Pain | Status: Unresolved

A strange thing has been happening to me lately - after doing some development work on various remote websites using FTP, sometimes I'll notice a particular file I was working on suddenly has no contents:

Screenshot of FTP client

As you can imagine, this can have disastrous consequences - hours of careful programming absolutely wiped out.

Now, certainly I did not intentionally remove the contents of the file, and save it. Perhaps I did by accident (I'll blame myself just once), but since it happens repeatedly to different files, I don't see any possible way I could be that clumsy.

So, I'm left to blame my FTP client. Is it somehow transmitting a blank file, perhaps between network connections? I often use a wireless modem for my laptop while commuting, as well as a FTP client for my iPhone. Both network connections for the respective devices can easily turn on and off at any given moment, depending on the signal strength.

This would not be a huge deal if my web host, Media Temple, offered incremental file backups on an hourly or daily basis. I could then easily retrieve a "snapshot" of the now-empty file from an hour ago, and all is well. I am still waiting for a reply from a customer support representative.

Until then, I find myself extremely lucky that I had a couple of backups of a recently emptied file stored elsewhere, and although it's not a fully-intact clone, it contains about 85% of the current file, and that's 85% less new code I have to re-write.

I am also planning on being much more diligent in regards to file backups in the future. Perhaps I'll set up a reminder on the first of every month to conduct full file backups for all of my sites.

For now, I'm still curious how this mysterious malady occurs, so I can avoid doing whatever is causing it.

About the author(s)

Matt Thommes is an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from a suburb of Chicago. Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.

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