Victoria University IT department deletes user files

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PolicyGuy

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#2678553 22-Mar-2021 16:01

decibel:

Made it on to Arstechnica - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/university-of-wellington-accidentally-deletes-files-on-all-desktop-pcs/

And The Register: "Staff and students at Victoria University of Wellington learn the most important lesson of all: Keep your files backed up | At last, after a year, my PhD is finally complee- bzzt!" - https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/19/vuw_backups/
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#2678673 22-Mar-2021 17:02

i learnt my lesson in uni when i stored everything on a CDRW !

so stupid

Lias

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#2678920 23-Mar-2021 07:58

decibel:

Made it on to Arstechnica - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/university-of-wellington-accidentally-deletes-files-on-all-desktop-pcs/

Ditto SlashDot and The Register

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BlakJak

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#2680733 25-Mar-2021 21:29

afe66: One aspect of the saving to cloud that I think should be considered is my IT department doesn't let you install software such as box dropbox.

You have to upload manually via browser but I think this is beyond skill of some people.

The University will have provided either a cloud service (OneDrive perhaps) or a Network service (shared drive) which will be subjected to backup.

Storing your master copy of anything on your local disk without a backup somewhere is basically your own silly fault... and if the Uni don't provide an 'integrated' cloud service (you won't be installing your own sync client, you'll be using one they provide!) then you should expect to upload via browser and this should be secondary to a network storage location they provide you with.

I regularly access my Google Drive contents via the browser at work, it's not great for day-to-day sync of a document that regularly changes but as a channel to keep an additional copy of a file, copied/synced manually, it works.

I just can't imagine not having something as important as a Thesis stored in more than one location and where the primary location isn't something synced, replicated, backed up.

Yes - local disk is accessible when you're offline. But without a backup you're at a risk level I wouldn't wear, personally.

Heck, 20 years ago when I was using Floppys I am pretty sure I kept a copy of my assignments on network storage as well.

No signature to see here, move along...

Mark

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#2681103 26-Mar-2021 14:35

Well if they were still running the Celerra I put in they would have been multiple checkpoints to pull the data back from (because I set them up that way) .. but that was in 2008 they should have upgraded a few times since :-)

tripper1000

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#2681126 26-Mar-2021 15:39

It all depends on the as-yet unknown uni policy for this.

Where I work, you are not supposed to save anything to the desktop - but you can (They provide plenty of backed-up shared drives & a cloud to store stuff on). If you come to work and your desktop is blank (it happens from time to time) you've got no grounds to gripe. The Uni could be the same.

This is test of relevant world skills. There are plenty of silly people with PhD's.

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CB_24

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#2681182 26-Mar-2021 16:02

lxsw20:

I thought roaming profiles died a death. They are horrid to deal with.

Not if they are done properly

mattwnz

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#2681183 26-Mar-2021 16:02

If I was a student I would have made sure I was saving data to a local drive that I plugged in to copy all files across to a local drive. I would never solely trust a cloud system. Especially after a bad experience I had with one cloud system, where someone deleted files on another computer and and it synced, and that ended up deleting files on my computer which was syncing to the same account. I always make sure I have at least 2 backups of everything.

Baboon

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#2682776 29-Mar-2021 21:08

For a critical document like a thesis, I'd be keeping personal backups (none of them being the working copy, but actual versioned backups!) on my home PC (gotten home first via flash drive or the following methods), emailing a copy to myself (Gmail and Yahoo accounts have heaps of storage, if your usual personal email doesn't), and making another copy to a personal cloud storage account that is _not_ the same as the email account used for the earlier method.

If you're capable enough, you could even automate this to a large degree. But if all else fails, create a daily calendar alert to prompt you to do this. And then _actually do it_! Don't put it off :-)

And if you're doing this manually, don't just overwrite files with the same names. You want to keep previous versions in case there was something undesirable or corrupt with the current version.

Sure, IT probably have a decent backup system if you're saving to the right places. But I would never fully depend on other people not to screw up. Nor would I depend on one email/cloud storage provider.

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Bung

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#2682784 29-Mar-2021 21:23

"IT probably have a backup system" , famous last words. In the days of tape back up Telecom at Tory St had a tape drive that for months had a faulty head so was only backing up half the server. The working track was the one that was used for verifying. Rather than take any responsibility IT put it back on users to do their own backups if it mattered to them.

Baboon

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#2682785 29-Mar-2021 21:28

Heh. Well, again - I would never fully trust others to avoid messing up! :-)

Back in the day I had a fellow Uni student who thought a second floppy (right next to the working floppy) in a cardboard floppies box, carried in his backpack, was a backup. Predictably, one day he was caught out in a rainstorm...

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MadEngineer

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#2682808 29-Mar-2021 22:57

When I set up a new device for the user their first sign in is done over the phone. I create an excel file titled Important and save to the usual (and empty) Documents folder and fully explain how if this device blew up right now you’ll lose that file.

I then create a shortcut at this location to their documents folder on the network on the mapped drive explaining if you see this shortcut it’s a reminder not to save here and to open the shortcut first.

There’s no excuse after that.

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Baboon

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#2682829 30-Mar-2021 00:09

I'm surprised it isn't more common to remap user documents folders to a network drive that _is_ backed up.

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1101

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#2682945 30-Mar-2021 10:09

Baboon: I'm surprised it isn't more common to remap user documents folders to a network drive that _is_ backed up.

You'd be surprised how many dont even save to a docs folder, they save to the desktop . Quite common , unfortunately .
So you'd have to remap , desktop, docs , pictures etc . It starts getting messy.

MadEngineer

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#2685040 31-Mar-2021 20:30

And if you do get it mostly working it doesn’t always go so smoothly for remote users. You’ll always get someone working offline who makes a small change to a file, does hours or work elsewhere to the same file then sync the wrong one.

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

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