I'm just curious as to what backup software you guys use that took you a week to be back online?!
I use BRU Server for Linux and that's how I backup my SME Server. When I had it crash about a year ago, ironically, I was back up and running in two hours.
The issue had nothing to do with backup software. Contribs.org suffered a major hardware failure that knocked out the primary RAID array and thereby the server farm that contribs.org lives on. We are talking terrabytes of data. The entire server farm was down, so there was nothing to restore the data too.
As stated in the announcement, steps are being taken to prevent this type of outage from happening again in the future.
Remember, Contribs.org is run 100% by volunteers on hardware they donate. The best thing everyone in the community can do to help with this effort is make a donation.