guess on which note i have a VPS...

[TGates]

Unbelievable....

[apinto]

To be honest, this seems extremely smelly.

First, the provider should had backups, I mean, they just should, there is no excuse.

Even if the police (using the term police seems extremely unprofessional, but let's not dig that way) would confiscate the HDD (it's not impossible) they could always restore a backup for the other clients, as far as we know they point that the reason they were not notified was to avoid data to be erased "due to a fact that the data there could be erased" this makes sense.
However this does not explain why they did not had the backups, the police would never take the backup HDDs (unless there were really sensitive information, even than they do not have the right to delete other users data), they want the data to serve as evidence not to avoid you having it.

anyways, good luck Ron

[kandrews]

Oh dear... Ron-e i hope you had a backup!

I agree with apinto, the provider should have been maintaining some sort of backup.. All providers will have the statement that their backups cannot and should not be relied on, however they should have a backup procedure!!

Even on zVPS we maintain 1 backup of every server on a weekly basis (which has saved a few of our customers bacon).

I'm placing bets they hadn't correctly setup RAID and one of their disks failed... Police entering a DC and taking HDDs... very unlikely...

[Dexxa]

Police spending all thier time opening servers up and taking the hard drives? doubt that why would they do that when they just take the full server?!?!?! :S

So strange, and it makes me smell a rat