Microsoft Finds Lost Sidekick Data -- Sort Of

"We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage," said Microsoft's Roz Ho, corporate vice president, Premium Mobile Experiences, in the T-Mobile Forum.

"We plan to begin restoring users' personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan," Ho said, adding that the company is continuing to work around the clock to get back users' lost information, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores as soon as possible.

Ho also said that T-Mobile will post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday, but in the meantime advised Sidekick users to continue check for news on T-Mobile's forums, which will also post instructions to retrieve wiped-out content.

The affected data from the Oct. 6 outage "almost certainly [was] lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger," a company spokesperson said last week in a statement.

Microsoft's Ho also said that although the company believes that the data loss only affected a "minority" of Sideskick users, it is initiating a "more resilient backup process to ensure that the integrity of our database backups is maintained."

Meanwhile, T-Mobile has offered a mea culpa and is giving affected users a $100 T-Mobile gift card and a month of free data service for their troubles. The card can be used toward T-Mobile products and services or a customer's bill. Affected users don't have to apply for the credit as T-Mobile will automatically send out the rebate within the next two weeks.