Oh well...
It has been an interesting 24 hours for me with lots of work and little sleep.
In a nutshell, here's what happened yesterday :
1130Z : old Forum taken to Read-Only state
1230Z : new Forum is installed
1245Z : first Automatic Forum Conversion failed
1330Z : alternative Automatic Forum Conversion used
1430Z : finetuning to the new Forum because many Settings did not make it over
1530Z : FTP Client suddenly begins transferring corrupt/incomplete data
1545Z : new Forum rendered unusable
1600Z : 2nd attempt to fix with two other FTP Clients
1630Z : important access restrictions cannot be set on the server for unknown reasons
1655Z : fiddling in and out of Forum Directories, old Forum Messages are deleted instead of the new Forum Messages - "human error"
1656Z : Seismic Institutes throughout Germany sense a highly localized 5.5 earthquake around this location
1700Z : old Forum is taken offline (InOp)
1715Z : Primary Harddrive failed - Installation damaged and LimOp
1730Z : desaster recovery in progress
1800Z : a single (!) functional most-recent Backup of the old Forum is rescued to a DVD-RW
2130Z : Primary Harddrive replaced, System recovery in progress
0230Z : Primary System is back up (LimOp)
0800Z : Completion of core assets on Primary System
1000Z : old Forum restoration in progress
1345Z : functionality checks completed, old Forum restored....
So if anyone wants to become a Forum Admin.... Think twice before you make that decision