Collations break on MySQL Update

[Simon Anthony]

We use a non-standard collation in order that customers can search for products using 14.4v or P-ABCDE. The period and hyphen in the voltage or part number would normally be treated by FullText as word breaks and by changing the collation this doesn't happen.

Our hosting partner keeps 'updating' MySQL and restoring the default XML files (Index.xml and latin1.xml) over our modified files and then the collation (1002) goes missing and the website fails.

My question is how do we stop this? Is the Oracle MySQL update overwriting the files (unlikely) or are the hosting company doing it? They of course say it's the update so I'd like to know if that's true before proceeding.

Having a website down for a day each month is getting seriously tedious.

Thanks.