(Below is an email I just received from Dreamhost)
Unfortunately we were unable to process your domain restore for [domain name redacted] … we seemed to be able to find a backup but for some reason couldn’t restore it within four hours! If you want, you can reply to this email and we’ll try and see if there’s anything we can still do.
We are very sorry about this! Howevvvvver… we actually make no guarantees about availability of backups, and highly recommend you always keep your own copies of all important data. Please follow the link below for instructions with this:
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Backup_Website_Manually
Thanks,
The Unhappy Dreamhost Domain Restore Robot!