This is the second time in two weeks that my db file has gotten completely wiped out. Totally blank, all records gone. It's been humming along perfectly for years and rarely has more than 50 records in it at any one
time, so I know size is not an issue. I haven't modified the script in over a year so it's not like I made a change that has caused this. Hmm... Anyone got any ideas?

Yes I've had that when I was on shared hosting and was hitting the limit of my quota on that particular server (domain).

Since then I've installed daily backups and when later the db size was a problem (around 1 mb) I used files for large textfields.

>>when I was on shared hosting

I'm thinking that is going to be the culprit. I've started (again) using a simple ftp script to "grab" my db and pw files at the end of each day
just in case...