User has been Auto deleted - all data lost

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KenBennett wrote:
They most certainly have, if you'd read. 

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What they've said is this (my summary from what I've read):

The ReadyCloud server failure triggered the mechanism that comes into play when users want to stop using ReadyCloud.  That mechanism initiated the deletion of all ReadyCloud accounts.  The NAS deletes the home folders whenever an account is deleted - and that includes ReadyCloud accounts.  Since this was initiated by the server, there was no user interaction to confirm the deletion - it happened silently.  Netgear has disabled that "clean-up" mechanism in the server to prevent the problem from re-occuring.

I seriously doubt that you'll get a deeper technical explanation than that summary (and if you did, it likely wouldn't make sense to anyone who doesn't work on ReadyCloud).  If I got something wrong, hopefully Netgear will correct it.

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KenBennett wrote:
They've come out with how people should have their data backed up.  I don't really care about that ...

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At the risk of angering you further: you might not care, but you should.  RAID is not enough to keep your data safe.  This is one proof point.  There are plenty of others posted here - lightning strikes, theft, power surges, systems being tipped over/dropped, near-simultaneous failure of multiple disks,...  If you had the data backed up, you wouldn't have lost much, if anything.  If you don't learn that lesson from this event, you will lose data again - no matter whose storage system you use.  It's just a matter of time.

This statement doesn't excuse Netgear.  It's like your doctor saying "if you had your seat belt on, you wouldn't have been seriously injured in that accident". That doesn't make you responsible for the accident.  

That said, I am not seeing posts in response to this particular event from mdgm, jennc, FramerV or any other Netgear employees that scold customers who lost data from this event for not having a backup.  Instead, I am seeing transparency on what happened, efforts to identify all customers who were affected, and offers to recover data without charge (which normally is a quite expensive service). This of course is what they should be doing (and although it is the right thing to do, it also doesn't excuse Netgear)

FWIW, I do think it is reasonable for the customer to purchase their own USB drive if that is needed to back their data up.  Though opinions on that likely vary.