What you don't want to hear from your web host

I have a domain parked with Globat, mostly because I have been too lazy to transfer it. (It's one of these deals where it's cheap to sign up, but you would do better renewing with someone else.)

They don't host a site for me -- like I said, the domain is parked -- and, after receiving an email from them this morning, I know that I never will host a site with them either.

Dear Philip,

On Saturday, May 17, 2008 Globat.com experienced a partial disk failure on a storage device attached to two of our web servers.

And you're telling me about it now? Six days later?

Normally a disk failure is not catastrophic.

Right. Because you've backed everything up, and you use best practices when it comes to data redundancy. I assume.

Unlike most home PCs our web servers use a storage technique that allows for a drive to fail without loss of data.
OK. Good.  
The disk failed completely at some point during the night and we switched over to the backup storage device.  After the failure and switching to the backup server, we began to discover that the backup procedure had been corrupted by the earlier partial disk failure and some sites had no backup available.
The backup process "copied" the data from the failed storage server to the backup server and essentially deleted the files on numerous websites before the error was detected.
Not so good.
We think that your website was among these.
Interesting, considering I don't host a site with you. 
Most of the dynamic data including all email files, addresses books and all database files were not affected by this incident.  The server is back online and running normally again and you can restore your website by uploading a backup copy of your website files.  We are extremely sorry for this incident and our Technical Support will try to answer questions related to getting your site back online.
Translation: We don't have a backup, so we sincerely hope you do, otherwise you're screwed.  And "addresses books"?
If by some chance you don't have a current backup copy of your website files handy
.. just like us!

please consider these possible sources:

1. If you originally used a website designer they should have a copy. Most website designers keep copies of the work they have done for clients.
2. You may have a copy on an older computer or stored CD.
3. Your site may be archived on the Internet.
4. You may have an older, non-current backup copy.

But didn't you say at the start that your data is backed up, unlike that on most PCs?
If none of these are possible, we can install a temporary page to explain that the files have been lost. 
Just don't expect it to say it was our fault.
Please contact our Technical Support department and we will see if there is anything we can do to help to get your site back online.
But don't ask for any kind of refund for this screw-up.