sharepoint 2010 site collections disappeared

Question

We have a staging server on client's environment. It worked well for several month. But the last time I connected there I noticed that 3 of 4 site collections disappeared there from 1 Web App. I restored them last Saturday. And today I've connected to the server and see that 3 of 4 site collections are disappeared again (but other scs, seems the last one is still there).

Disappear - mean that there is no such SCs now in the Web Application if I look in Central Administration. Also no SC in Content DBs of web Application.

What can lead to such behavior? Is there any way to check any logs to find out when and why it happened?

I've tried checking logs for messages that are logged when deleting SC from CA but found nothing ('Scheduling the site at http://{your-server-name}/sites/scname (ID = a46ea8ce-7631-4738-8598-148a9a7a4989) for deletion and not deleting AD accounts.')

Update:

I've checked the sql server and the SCs are still in content db, but they are invisible to SharePoint. Thus I can't restore SC from a backup in the current content db without -force attribute.

Answer 1

I never came across this problem before but seems like its because of a new feature in SharePoint 2010,

Central Administration --> Application Management --> Site collections --> Confirm Site use and deletion and check if site collection automatic deletion was enable.

Then go to Central Administration -->Monitoring --> Review job definitions-->Dead Site Delete(for the web application with problem) and check the last run time of this timer job.

Same Problem

It could give you a hint for what has been happening.

Hope it helps.