Several students checked their Bowdoin email boxes early last week to find their inboxes empty.
Many students panicked, having had uploaded and sent through their webmail accounts.
"I was very upset. I had important school information [in my email]," said Carolyn Boyle '08, who found her email box empty last Sunday morning.
Faculty were also affected by the crash. Professor Joanne Bosse, assistant professor in the music department, sent a second-round of emails with the upcoming assignments upon hearing that some students were having difficulty with their emails.
The problems occurred due to a systems upgrade that took place last week.
Previously, there were over 1.5 million files that had been stored in a device called the Network Appliance F825, which had a storage maximum of three terabytes. Because the system was approaching the limit this summer, Information Technology purchased the NetApp R200, a storage device that has a maximum capacity of eight terabytes.
Last week, the files from Network Appliance F825 were moved to the new storage device, NetApp R200.
"The migration took several days non-stop to accomplish, and when completed, we found one minor flaw in the entire migration. When the e-mail store was moved, there were errors with about one in 12 users. The errors occurred due to a few index files not being updated properly," said Tim Antonowicz, a systems administrator at Bowdoin.
These users would have problems reading their emails or accessing the problem folders such as the "Trash" or "Sent" folders.
"IT worked all day and night to get the email working," said Chief Information Officer Mitch Davis.
All the mail was eventually restored. "We continue to scan for any erroneous index files and proactively fix the problem," said Antonowicz.
"I'm glad they fixed the problem," said Boyle '08, "They were speedy considering the problem was pretty substantial."
This is not the first time the email system has had problems. Last year, problems occured due to the speed of delivery of emails, according to Antonowicz.
IT now processes at least 40,000 more emails each day than it did at the beginning of last year. In the fall of 2003, the email system handled 10,000 emails a day, 25,000 in February, and 35,000 in April. Today, it handles 50,000 to 75,000 every day.
"A large percentage of the increase is related to spam and virus activity. We have been scanning for both for nearly two years on our mail system. However, with the influx of new viruses, there were variants that would turn the local infected PC into a 'Spam Zombie,' sending out more spam from inside our network," Antonowicz said.
The additional emails would come from each infected PC.
Last spring, IT added a new layer to the system that scanned for spam and viruses.
"This is very processor intensive, and by performing the work before messages get to the Mail server, it allows more processing power to be directed to mail delivery instead of virus scanning," Antonowicz said.
"As an analogy, if the Post Office had to open each letter it received, check it for problems, and reseal it before it could deliver the letter to you, a letter would take weeks to get across town," said Antonowicz.
IT hopes its new changes will improve the email system. The move of file storage from the old storage device to the new one will give the system a greater holding capacity.
Emails for students and faculty will be separated onto separate servers. This will increase the speed for receiving emails, said Davis. In addition, if one of the servers goes down, then the other server can take up the job of the first.
"[Email] is going to get better," Davis said. "Our goal is to get email to where it never goes down." IT plans to upgrade software to make it easier to use, he said.
"However, anyone that is still having issues [with email] should feel free to call the Help Desk for assistance," Antonowicz said.
The Student Help Desk can be contacted at x5050. Faculty should call x3030.