Strange how just a couple of days ago I was going on about how server problems can bring you down, when, hey presto, primary hard drive failure on the server hosting four of Syntagma Media’s blogs.

The sites are still down as I write this: 14.25 GMT, 09.25 EST. However, I’m somewhat relieved by the following screed presented by the server company managing all our sites:

Flashback lets you restore up-to-the-second backups of files, retrieve any past version of any file in the history of your site, restore your entire site, go “back in time” to any point in your site’s history, and much more. Once you’ve used Flashback, you’ll never work without it again!

Phew, saved, it seems !

But does this include a “primary hard drive failure”? The guys at the company are pretty tense right now. The forum has been closed after a few angry entries. So, what are we looking at here?

There seems to be an insidious movement gathering pace to bring down the Web. We know about b5media’s problems, and Paul Short’s disasters are well documented around the blogosphere. Last week we heard that the Million Dollar Homepage Site run by a young chap in England, who sells pixels at a dollar each and has become a dollar millionaire, was brought down by hands unseen. The story is that young Master Tew was being held to ransom by the Russian mafia for $50,000. I’m quoting from BusinessWeek Blogspotting, though I don’t have the reference to hand.

The question arises, how many of our server companies are also being held to ransom, by whom, and are they paying up? What is going on out there?

Does anyone know?