According to Nirvanix, MediaMax has previously said in its blog that the company's storage problems began in June 2007 -- before Nirvanix was incorporated. The Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network itself was not launched until October 2007, Nirvanix says.

There is now only one post left on The Linkup blog—a message dated July 9, 2008, explaining that the service would close on Aug. 8 and all customer information and files would be deleted. Users were urged to download their files before that date.
"It was not possible to satisfactorily complete the move of files from MediaMax to The Linkup as we had expected, and as a result cannot offer a service that meets your expectations and our business requirements," The Linkup blog states. "This is a very disappointing outcome for us, and we know it has been a frustrating experience for many of our customers."

The Linkup updated the post two days later with the following statements:

1. The only files that are available for download are the files that are currently in your The Linkup account.
2. Nirvanix cannot provide access to any additional data or assist with accessing your files. Please do not contact them."

The Linkup blog does not say how much data is inaccessible.

Iverson says he is not aware of any efforts to recover the inaccessible data. Nirvanix was managing The Linkup's servers and storage, which were separate from the new Storage Delivery Network platform on which Nirvanix stores data from its own customers, Iverson says.

"We were paying them a pretty significant amount of money [to manage the servers and storage]," Iverson says. "I think it's a horrible outcome. It’s a worst-case scenario, for really everybody involved."

Nirvanix, on its blog, says that the files Linkup customers can no longer access—the ones that were not transferred to The Linkup application as intended—are not exactly lost. They "remain secure in the old Streamload/MediaMax storage system."
However, Nirvanix says it can't access these files because that would require "the MediaMax application and database front-end which Nirvanix has no access to. Ownership of the MediaMax application front-end and user data belongs solely to MediaMax, Inc."

Iverson says he doesn’t agree with Nirvanix's assessment on this point. But he said it would be difficult for him to uncover all the reasons for the system's failure because Nirvanix was the one managing the hardware.