three stories about backups

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

It's a quiet night before finals, and all through campus...people are being stupid. It's probably the anxiety.


1. Kid A has accidentally deleted his thesis. It's a very rough draft, and less than ten pages, but he'd like to get it back. Since he can recover the file on his own, I give him the instructions and he runs off. He returns a few minutes later, it won't work, it's gone for good. This time I realize that he had it only on his home server (server space for all), and I admit that yes, they do make nightly backups of the home server, but it might not have gotten his latest. Anyway, it's something that only full time staff can access. I give him instructions for possibly digging it out of AutoSave, he runs off again. When he returns, insistent that I find some way to save his file, he tells me the difference between his old copy and the new one is less than three pages. "Look," I say as gently as possible, "it's going to take more time to get an unlikely copy than it would to just rewrite the missing part. I know it sucks, but if you rewrite it now, you will probably remember a lot of it. It might even be better the second time around." The guy sees my point--and that I am incapable of helping him further--and returns to the library. I'm sorry dude, but if you only work off of your home server, it not only slows down access to everyone's server space but it prevents the nice local backup. Kudos for having a copy on the home server at all, though.

2. One of my coworkers is a second semester senior and has only one copy of her thesis anywhere: on her local machine. That's tempting fate.

And now, for a shining example of intelligence.
3. Our student body president brings in his laptop, whose hard drive had made scary clicking noises before crashing, burning and otherwise dying for good. Luckily, as soon as the clicking noises started, he saved his thesis to his home server. If only all the seniors could be as smart as our student body president.

Also, in a few weeks we will have moved everyone to IMAP and our old system of email will be no longer. There are few stragglers who insist on clinging to the old ways, mainly out of principle. I like them and bemoan the loss of Blitzmail, but really, we're not facists. It's getting old. (Look at how pretty Thunderbird is! Look at all the options for customization! I'm beginnning to feel like Sam in Green Eggs and Ham.)

Comments

[jecook]

Groovy icon.

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

I heard some great stories from the Dean of Students when she dropped by the help desk during finals week last year.

First, there was the guy who had stayed in the computer lab all night working on his thesis on his Mac laptop. Come 7 a.m., he was done and ready to go get some sleep. He jumped on his skateboard to head back to his dorm - and dropped his laptop. Which promptly shattered into a million pieces. He sent off the harddrive to Apple in the hopes of recovering his thesis, but there was no hope. He had to get a 3-week extension.

Then there was the student who dropped her zip disk while crossing the street, where it promptly got run over my a motorcycle. My friend Jason was personally responsible for saving her ass by extracting the magnetic disk from inside the crushed zip disk and inserting it into a striped down new one. Somehow, the data was still readable.

Last but not least involved a massive dorm fire that was caused by a student smoking up and passing out on his bed with the joint still lit. When the admins started hunting for all the residents to make sure they'd gotten out safely, one girl (who'd lived next door to the idiot pothead) was found sitting against a wall clutching the only thing she'd salvaged from her room - a hard copy of her thesis.

After hearing these stories, I got a little paranoid (http://www.livejournal.com/users/guinevere33/324882.html?nc=7).

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

MAN.

A few summers ago, a friend of mine was reshelving books when she came across a strangely thin thesis. It was signed off by the department, professor and everyone, but it was VERY skinny. Intrigued, my friend flipped through it until she found a post-it in the table of contents which described how the student had finished his thesis, got through orals and had his nicely bound theses in a stack in his room...when his house burnt down.

This was pre-computers, and his adviser didn't have a copy. He had burnt his rough drafts during Thesis Parade. So he salvaged something from god knows where and submitted that. SAD.

Inspired and newly paranoid, my friend stored a copy of her thesis in the dorm freezer.

I haven't started writing yet, but I have my .bib file and dataset saved to my home server and in gmail. I also plan on burning CDs regularly and printing out hard copies, but...have nowhere near the extent of paranoia that you acquired. And yet those stories make me nervous.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Kudos to the pothead's neighbour for instinctively grabbing the one thing that mattered most to her, and having it be her thesis. The kid's got her priorities straight.

[lions-tambua.livejournal.com]

well. i do prefer POP3 instead of IMAP too ;)
but i, of course, see the advantages of IMAP.
harddrive-crash ? no problems, mails are still there
the user cant just delete "accidently" his mail-folders on local disk
but the disadvantage: network access will rise up quite far since most of the users just start the mailprogramm and keep the connection for the whole day. and when they open an file from their inbox, they dont save if before working on it, no, they work with the open file and keep the file inside the mail.
its getting fun to troubleshoot the problem when they come and say, "waaaaeehh.. my processor is too slow. word takes MINUTES to open an single file"

[ihateemo.livejournal.com]

well. i do prefer POP3 instead of IMAP too ;)

Yeah, me too. :\

[lovemonster.livejournal.com]

I had a Dr's office last week lose 5 years worth of charts, patient demographics, etc bc they didn't have their database saved at an off-site location. They had their D drive mirroed too well to their C drive so when the C drive tanked, the D drive tanked too.

It's our fault, of course.

[knittinggoddess.livejournal.com]

of course! you surely specifically told them to never back up, or something. really.

[lovemonster.livejournal.com]

I would never tell a client to backup! What's the point, right... they don't listen to me anyway. They're doctors, they obviously are smarter and know more than I do

*rolls eyes*