Not knowing the full details of CF's hosting plan, but as someone who works with providers regularly, offsite backups are not the rule, and yes are often significanly additional $.

Often, nightly backups are kept on that same server, and often on a 2nd hard drive, and many providers will do a manual incremental montly tape backup at cheaper cost.

No one expects a provider to just up and format a machine (both hard drives) without contacting someone, but as I said this has happened to me. It's bad business for the provider, obviously, to assume a client is gone, but sales and support do not talk to each other too much apparently in smaller providers that may not be as well run (but at the same time cheaper and more flexible).

#### theplanet.com and let that be that.