The one thing I don't understand is why you wait 1.5 years. You know where your co-located server is housed, right? You know the address for FDCservers, right? After 2 months, I would've been down there telling them to hand over my property, or I'd head down to the nearest police station and file some theft charges.
Here's some advice for people doing co-located hosting:
1) Mark your servers -- i.e. engrave your name and address on the outside -and- inside of the casing.
2) Make sure you know
where your servers are at; it's nice to know they're "somewhere in our DC on the east coast", but knowing they're on 33 2nd ave in downtown new york (fictional address
) is much better.
3) Do some due diligence before hosting with anyone offering co-location. How long have they been in business, check the BBB. If it doesn't look good, bail.