Chunks reverting - My servers world map (8-9 months of builds), Please help me

So i have been running my 24/7 Freebuild server (iWillCraft) since way back in the alpha days and just on Tuesday i got news that one of our regulars' mansion was "slowly deteriorating". This is something i never thought possible, and needless to say i didn't believe it until i saw it with my own eyes. I later learned that notch had mentioned something about it on his blog. Our world is pretty damn huge, (1.7 gb). I have a border around the map (waitforit....12000 blocks diameter). Yeah i know huge. I also later learned that the strange chunk reversion was happening to yet another one of our regulars' builds. I then decided to put our world folder on quarantine. I set up a temporary flatland world for the community to build in and let them know that later, anything they build on the temporary world will be later moved to the regular world via copy/paste with WorldEdit.

The strangest part about the whole thing was that when i was trying to bring back the player's builds with worldedit/spc, in EVERY backup, the damaged builds were in the same damaged state, even though the player said that the build was fine an hour before i was alerted of the issue by one of my ops. I tried multiple times with multiple backups, all had the same damage. Never experienced anything like that in all my time doing this.

So i ask the bukkit community, what can i do to stop this from happening. I really hope it can be fixed somehow... Is there anything i can do?

Server specs:
AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-core 2.2
8gb (start.bat has 5gb dedicated)
Win7 x64

 

No idea, but it maybe a adverse effect of having such a large map. You may want to either multiworld or something else to keep it from happening again. As for why it happens, I have no idea. Try running vanilla and see if it reverts any further back.

 

What exactly happens, what does it look like?

I don't think it has anything to do with the world size. We have over 5GB now, map roughly half a year old and explored to at least 60,000 from spawn, and never had a chunk error or buildings 'deteriorating'.

 

Basically one instance was a player who had a large mansion. One of my ops had laid down a 1 block thick layer of grass over part of a lake at sometime or another previous to the indecent-(possible clue? Mcregion conversion in early beta?), and when i saw it, it was basically just 3-4 bits & pieces of the mansion, and the base of it was gone, exposing the water underneath. The second instance i never saw, i didn't really feel like i needed to, the news was just that the same crap was happening to this other players build, which was enough for me to take action and quarantine the world. But yeah, the best way i could describe it would be over a few hours, slowly the builds would loose pieces and pieces of them, reverting the chunk the build was on to its original untouched state. The flatgrass part that was cuboided-in, that i am guessing had existed possibly before the mcregions implementation, was untouched/un reverted but there remained a hole where the players' mansions floor had existed, exposing the water underneath.

I'd like to link anyone interested or that thinks they may be able to help to a Reddit thread we came across, and a plugin someone showed me on here called Chunkster. Right now these seem like my only two two options and only sources for information regarding the issue, which worries me...

I haven't tried Chunkster yet, i admit i'm procrastinating a bit even though i plan on testing it on a backup world of course.

 

Just back it up and try it. Procrastination makes it more painful. Worst it can do is nothing.

 

I know i know. Thanks for the encouragement and help.

 

Wow. I didn't know this was possible.

What plugins do you have? (Type /plugins and press F2 then upload the picture)

 

A good 40 or so lol.


Also, i ended up finding this webpage of a guy who restores world folders for people who experience errors / curruption etc. I submitted my world and am waiting for a response.

http://www.mcsaver.site50.net/