Microsoft: We have recovered most T-Mobile Sidekick data

Microsoft said that it had been able to recover most, if not all, of the personal data that Sidekick users lost in a recent outage. The company said that it will begin restoring the data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, as soon as it validates the data and the restoration plan.

"We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible," wrote Roz Ho, Microsoft's corporate vice president for premium mobile experiences, in a T-Mobile forum post. The company said it will work with T-Mobile USA to post details about the timing of the data restoration no later than Sunday.

Microsoft said it believes that the data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users, though it didn't provide a specific number. Additionally, Ho said Microsoft determined that the outage was caused "by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up."

"We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way," Ho said. "This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data." Microsoft said it has now taken steps to improve the stability of the Sidekick service and has a more "resilient" back-up service.

Meanwhile, according to blogger and author Daniel Eran Dilger, who cited anonymous sources familiar with the situation in Microsoft, there is some suspicion that the outage may have been caused by sabotage. Dilger said the suspicions are tied to tensions inside Microsoft, related to its various mobile efforts.

T-Mobile representatives did not immediately responded to requests for comment. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment, citing a policy of not commenting on rumors or speculation.

For more:
- see this T-Mobile forum post [1]
- see this Network World article [2]

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Sidekick maker Danger files for IPO [6]