Hey! Hey! I said do NOT delete!

[lovemonster.livejournal.com]

Dunno if you all saw this or not.....

Technician's error wipes out an account worth $38 billion. As "they labored to retrieve the data, it became obvious the worst-case scenario was at hand... And the only backup was the paperwork itself "

Understatement of the Year: Omg, it would SO suck to be them!

Comments

[phrogg.livejournal.com]

What, they haven't heard of data recovery utilities?

Geez, if i'd have heard about that, i could have hopped down (yes, i said DOWN) and offered one of my licenses of EasyRecovery...it's worked like a charm for me almost consistently (unless the drive's been significantly overwritten).

There are even programs that will go back 3 or 4 wipes.

CRAP! You just reminded me that i missed the application deadline AGAIN this year. *stops off, swearing*

[manuka.livejournal.com]

In other news, some poor IT schmuck in Alaska is desperately seeking a career change.

[adriannevandal.livejournal.com]

Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks that going totally paperless is a good idea...

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Yay for dead tree backups. They need no UPS and cannot be easily erased or overwritten...
just make sure you keep them in a stable environment.

[seriously, I just had to explain to someone why the 1987 paper backups probably aren't going to be much use... it involved a leaky roof and black mildew.]

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Methinks he's probably doing field support tech, a loooooong way away from anything even slightly like civilisation...

and this being Alaska, that's pretty damn bad.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

That's the thing I don't get... 1 gets you 10 that they used every trick under the sun to try and recover the data...

which begs the question what in Babbage's name did the tech do that they couldn't recover any data?

I mean I've personally seen data recovered from a drive that quite literally took a bullet!

[jecook]

Heh.

I'm currently doing data recovery on one of four systems that does an alledgedly minor task here: it acts as a controller/bridge for a money counting machine roughly the size of 3 HP laserjet 4 printers sitting in a row. And the outlook does *not* look good as of this writing...

[yndy.livejournal.com]

and this would be why a good SAN engineer makes so much money - because someone who knows how to do a reliable backup that can't be easily deleted and is internally redundant several times over when your data is that important? worth their weight in gold...

lol

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

How does one reformat both the primary AND the backup drive in a situation like that?

And why wasn't it on a SAN set up to prevent that sort of thing?

Oh .. maybe those are the questions whose answer would also explain why this wasn't a "witch hunt" .. because maybe the people who planned out the system realized they left this vulnerability open ..

[phrogg.livejournal.com]

Hm. Suddenly we Alaskans are back to living in igloos and using dogsleds to get around...

*chuckles* You're a bit mistaken, man. We've actually got quite a good setup, here. And the state has its own techs, we're not all just field agents.

[major-error.livejournal.com]

Quite true. It's one thing to have scheduled backups...
Verifying an actual usable snapshot of the data is another matter entirely.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Alaska, the only US State that knows how Canadians feel. ;-P

Of course, there's also folks that thing Alaska is an island off the South-West coast of the Mainland. You know, (L)users. ;-P

[canray.livejournal.com]

More. In this case, worth US$38 Billion.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Actually, one of my old buddies back home had a story about that.

He worked on the old Punchcard machine at a major company back in the day.

One night, one of the "Tech's" (Someone who literally got his job by being related to the right people) decided to feed through the OS Cards in the wrong way.

Long story short, he went across the compound to get the only existing back-up copies in existance, and ruined them as well, *THEN* decided to let the Dayshift Guys fix the problem.

The fix was selling the machine as scrap, as it was impossible to get replacement cards.

And, yes, he was only transfered, not fired. TANJ.

[canray.livejournal.com]

I knew blinged out computer cases would lead to gang violence.

Let me guess, a victim of a drive-by on the Information Superhighway?

[phrogg.livejournal.com]

I actually got that, once, on a call to Hell Customer Service.

"Wow, you're from Alaska? (first stupid question:) is it cold there?"
[No, ma'am, it's the middle of January. I rode to work with the windows down, in short-sleeves and shorts.]
"I just don't understand how it can be so cold there, when you're that close to Hawaii!"

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Actually, contractors laptop in Iraq. Bullet went though the side of the car, missed the guy and hit his kitbag...
he was on his way back home anyway, so he brought it in just to show us... one of the techs took a good look at it and asked him if he wanted the data off the drive. When he picked his jaw off the floor he said yes.

The drive was fragged, but the platters were ok, you see.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Hey, wasn't making assumptions... other than Alaska has more than it's fair share of wilderness...

I'm guessing if management wanted to be vindictive, they could probably find somewhere to put him/her.

Besides, I know you guys have skidoos and snowmobiles, I've seen the pictures of the turbo-charged, pimped out results of wayyy too many nights with not much else to do! ;-)

[phrogg.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. But "a loooooong way away from anything even slightly like civilisation" makes it sound like we're completely cut off from the rest of the world, both socially and technologically.

Eh...it looks like i'm more pissy about this than i really am. I'm more joking than anything else.

We've got cities, you know. 0.o

And yes, we have electricity. @_@ I've been asked before. In a chat. Online.

[canray.livejournal.com]

I'm currently working on a theory that Dell's suffer from Supidity Radiation.

Stupidium, I call it. As you work with Dell's, or for Dell, your intelligence decreases until all you can do is work from a script.

'Course, that might just be due to the experience we all know about dealing with their tech support. ;-P

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

*snork*
Should've told the luser that you were connecting to the net via IPP... Internet Protocol (by) Pidgin. I.e, sending the information packets by carrier pidgins.

and I guess it did sound like I was assuming it's all trees and snow up there, sorry about that. I know you've cities [hey, got friends up there!] just I figured that there are rather large chunks of bugger-all in the area as well... dotted with a few oil fields, research posts and whatnot.

Actually, that sounds a bit like Scotland as well... ;)

[canray.livejournal.com]

"We have electricity, running water, and submarines in Canada, don't be so elitist."

I do have to admit, however, that said sub is in the West Edmonton Mall. ;-P

[canray.livejournal.com]

Northern Ontario as well. I can confirm that.

We even have cities in Northern Ontario.

Well... City. ;-P

[codecattx.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the dayshift guys got to have a "discussion" with him in the parking lot.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Not that they confessed to me. :-P

[adriannevandal.livejournal.com]

Ooohh... ::cringe::