Comment by efitz
9 days ago
The lack of backups makes my blood boil. However, from my own experience, I want to know more before I assign blame.
The very first "computer guy" job I had starting in about 1990/1991, my mentor gave me a piece of advice that I remember to this day: "Your job is to make sure the backups are working; everything else is gravy."
While I worked in that job, we outgrew the tape backup system we were using, so I started replicating critical data between our two sites (using 14400 bps Shiva NetModems), and every month I'd write a memo requesting a working backup system and explaining the situation. Business was too cheap to buy it.
We had a hard drive failure on one of our servers, I requested permission to invalidate the drive's warranty because I was pretty sure it was a bad bearing; I got it working for a few weeks by opening the case and spinning the platter with my finger to get it started. I made sure a manager was present so that they could understand how wack the situation was- they bought me a new drive but not the extras that I asked for, in order to mirror.
After I left that job, a friend of mine called me a month later and told me that they had a server failure and were trying to blame the lack of backups on me; fortunately my successor found my stack of memos.
Yeah. I've seen it. Had one very close call. The thieves took an awful lot of stuff, including the backups, had they taken the next box off the server room rack the company would have been destroyed. They stole one of our trucks (which probably means it was an inside job) and appear to have worked their way through the building, becoming more selective as they progressed. We are guessing they filled the truck and left.
Did anything change? No.
> fortunately my successor found my stack of memos
Those, ironically, were backed up