[Balanor]

At this point in time, the Thay PW server is down and an attempt to retrieve data from the dead server hard drive is underway. As there have been numerous people who mentioned they would be willing to help financially, I have created a PayPal account, listed at the bottom of this post, to which you can donate if you like. I first want to stress that any donation is purely voluntary and entirely your decision to make! Any and everyone who plays here is welcome back when the server returns, regardless of whether or not you are able to contribute financially.

Those who donate will have my sincere gratitude, but I want to set the expectation up front that, as a matter of principle, I or the DMs cannot do anything special for you in-game. Money raised in this campaign will directly benefit everyone, and I hope anyone who gives will simply expect to ‘feel good’ for helping out the entire Thayan community. I will not be publicly posting who has donated or how much they donated but if you wish, you are free to mention it here yourself though. At the end of this little campaign I will provide general details about how many people donated and the total amount given.

If you decide to donate now, the money you give will go to two purposes:
1. Attempting to retrieve data off the dead hard drive.
This requires sending the drive off, which carries a non-refundable fee of $149.99. if data can be recovered, an additional $379 is charged. Total cost, if data recover is successful, would come to $529.98. I cannot justify spending that much of my own money on NWN data recovery when point #2 below is needed as well. So donations will first be used to offset this cost. If I can at least get enough to cover the majority of the cost of data recovery, I’ll proceed with this option.

2. Purchasing a new hard drive for the server.
If there is donated money remaining after the recovery of data, or if I don’t get enough donations to cover at least a good portion of the cost of the recovery of data decide not to go that route, whatever funds remain will go to the purchase of a new hard drive for the server. One needs to be researched and purchased that is meant to handle a high amount of I/O over a long period of time.
If there are any computer hardware experts in the community, PM me your recommendations.

While I do not want to rush people into a decision to donate, please understand that time is of the essence right now. In a worst case scenario, the dead drive will need to be sent off to try and recover data, and in that case it will around $600. I really want to decide if this is a route to take before I leave on my anniversary vacation on Sunday, August 31. If this is not decided before then, I will be unable to send the disk off for full-blown expensive recovery until Sept 11 at the earliest, and then there will likely be another 1-3 week delay as it is being worked on. I *really* don’t want the server to be offline for that amount of time. But either way, if it looks like I may end up carrying most of the cost for data recovery in either scenario, it will not occur since the priority for me is to purchase a new hard drive if I must decide between these two options.

So in closing, if you are most interested in trying to get back data recovered from the hard drive, please donate soon. Every dollar/euro/pound/peso in that account before Office Max closes on Saturday at 9:00 PM Central is a vote for doing whatever it takes to try and recover the data on the dead drive. Otherwise, your funds will still go to good use in getting the server a new, improved hard drive.

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DONATIONS NO LONGER REQUESTED. THANKS TO ALL WHO DID CONTRIBUTE DURING THIS CAMPAIGN.

[Balanor]

So far we've got $125 in the pot. Thanks to those of you who have donated. :)

If you would, when you donate, please put your forum name or login handle in the notes so I know you who you are in the Thay PW. For those that have already, I'd really appreciate it if you would just shoot me off a quick PM so I know who you are.

Thanks!!!

[Balanor]

While it seems for every step forward there are two steps back at the moment, I do have to say that the donation response from the community is looking really good. As of this post, there is now $275 in Thay's vault. If this amount can creep up a little (or a lot!) higher before this time tomorrow, I'll take in the dead drive before I leave on Sunday.

I know there are several of you who don't use PayPal, or are putting the 'check in the mail', or have mentioned your intent to donate - and that's awesome. I just know that sometimes ever the best intentions don't always work out, so by having most of the necessary money on hand tomorrow, with the intent that more is likely on the way, will make me feel *a lot* better about taking it in sooner rather than later.

[Balanor]

As of this morning, Thay's vault stands at $423.50. The foreign conversion rate from Cormyrian Lions to Thayan Talons is what has given us such an odd number. ;)

It would still be nice to get a little more to help with the cost of data recovery (and eventually for the new hard drive), so if you are planning to donate it would still be useful/welcome. But with what we have right now (and partly based on what others have pledged they intend to donate) I am comfortable that even if this wonderful outpouring of financial support should abruptly end and no more talons roll in, what we have would seem to be a good chunk of the cost of data recovery.

So I am going to bring the hard drive in today for the 'deep disk' recovery effort. As mentioned, it's $150 non-refundable, and then more if they are successful. Thanks who all who have donated for making this possible! And for everyone, please keep your 'everythings' crossed that we will get charged more than $150 when they find and pull our data off the drive...

[Balanor]

After returning from my vacation, the amount in Thay's vault stands at $773.50. My sincerest thanks to all of you who have donated!

Money from this fund has already gone to purchase a speedy new SSD drive for the server to run on, which is now currently up (although see the first post in thread in my signature for information about this timeframe and the password to login to the server if you really want to do so). In addition, money was also spent from this fund to send the drive into Best Buy for data recovery and it was determined the expense would be much too high ($1550) for this fund to cover. I have searched around and we may have some other options for sending in the drive to cheaper locations, but the amount remaining in our vault will likely not cover the cost at most of those places.

I need to make a decision as to whether the final, expensive option to recover data from the drive will be attempted, and that decision hinges on how much is in Thay's vault. I do not want to make *anyone* feel bad for not donating - this is completely voluntary! But if you do want the latest data recovered from the day of the crash, please consider donating within the next week.

[Balanor]

I am calling a close to the donation period. Please send no more donations at this time. A plan for one last attempt at data recovery has been developed to fit into the budget provided with the remaining money in Thay's vault. More on that will be posted to the Status of the Thay PW thread.

The final amount contributed to Thay's Recovery fund totaled $773.50. This exceeded my expectations for what I hoped might come in. Several of these were 3-figure donations, which further astounded me. Regardless of the amount given, if it were $25 or $200, thank you so very much to all those who donated. And a further thank you goes to the entire Thay community for making this a place they felt was worthy of donating to!

[Balanor]

To provide a final tally of everything:
After purchase of a new SSD drive, a used backup HDD (primarily for parts, but will use as a backup when the data recovery attempt has been completed), a Torx set to work with the tiny hard drive screws, Best Buys data analysis fee (what a waste), the dozens of hours I've spent on the recovery efforts (just kidding - they're free), and now the shipping and payment to send the board away to get soldering work done, the total cost to Thay's vault came to just under $350, which means we end up with a positive balance of about $480.

It was never my intention to make money from this disaster. So for those of you who donated who would like a refund since data recovery was unsuccessful, I can send back your money. Send me a PM if you would like that. Otherwise, I'm just hoping for enough to help offset or cover most of the cost of what's been spent so far. If we do end up with enough money left over, I will buy another new hard drive so a good, non-used backup is ready and on hand in the event the drive we have now fails (which hopefully will not happen for many years though). Otherwise, I will use the funds to continue to pay for the static IP address which is, and has been, charged on a monthly basis.

And again, a final thank you to all who donated. I'm sorry we weren't able to get data recovery as was probably the primary intention for most of the donations, although I hope the attempts to do so were somewhat worthy of the contributions you made.

[Bela]

Keep my donation Thayan.

I sent that for the work to be done. You have done a great job trying to recover the data, so use it towards extra 'safety features' as you see fit. Or just use it to reclaim what you had already paid out before we started to donate.

Once again I would like to thank you greatly for ALL the time and effort you have spent on this recovery and giving us some great incentives.

Your the best. :D

[Gwydion669]

Keep mine as well.

Safety features, IP address, future upgrades/repairs to the server, use it for whatever's necessary now or in the future. I consider it to be money well spent.

[Miscr3ant]

Keep mine as well.

Safety features, IP address, future upgrades/repairs to the server, use it for whatever's necessary now or in the future. I consider it to be money well spent.

This. ;)