Mar 3, 2011 14:09 GMT  ·  By

Gmail has finally recovered from the software bug that led to a disastrous data loss for tens of thousands of accounts over the weekend. Five days later, most account data has been restored, but for those involved it must have been quite the ordeal. Google believes that all problems have been relieved at this point, but is asking users to contact it if they experience trouble.

"The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better," Google wrote in its App Status dashboard.

"Gmail should be back to normal for the vast majority of people affected by this issue. If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us at [email protected]. Thanks again for bearing with us," Gmail continued.

It's great that, in the end, no data was lost, but this has been the biggest outage in Gmail history. While the problem was not widespread, tens of thousands of people unable to access their email accounts for several days is quite significant.

What's more, during this time, those affected were unable to receive any emails sent their way. And it's likely that many of them, especially if they rely on Gmail for work, will be seeking alternatives after this.

The problem started on Saturday and persisted for some until earlier today when Google updated the App Status Dashboard for the final time, announcing that it had finished recovering the data.

Those affected were presented with an empty Gmail account and all of their emails, sent or received, gone. The problem was caused by a buggy software update which led to data loss at several data centers. Fortunately for Google, all of the data was also backed up on tape, but recovering it and restoring the accounts took a lot of time.