When backup fails

We've all heard in our workplace to always make backup. Always make copy of your files. You never know when your computer might crash. So here's the thing. Yes, a few people do make backups and copies of their files, and a few don't even bother. It's when their computer crashes when they start to go in panic mode.

Reminds me of the Limp Bizkit song Rollin, "Backup backup, tell me what' cha gonna do now"

And the same old dialogues that often you hear is, "dammit, i should have made a backup of it."
The next step is they call the IT guys,
"hey, my computer / hard disk just crash. Is there a way that you can recover them. I have very important files on the disk. I need to do a presentation to the boss and those files contains valuable information. I stayed up all night preparing for them"

The IT guy would then ask "Did you make a backup copy of those files anywhere?"
The client will then reply, " If i did would i be calling you"
The IT guy would then go "(in silent mode) !@$#@%%&$%^$ (This is when you wish you could use the fist of death)"

So the lesson learned so far is always create a backup. It can be in a form of CD, DVD, external drive, diskette and other sorts of media. But what happens when your backup fails???

As i was minding my own business today, my manager called me up to his room. He said that his USB thumbdrive when plugged in gives out the message " The disk is not formatted. Do you want to format it now. Yes / No". Lucky him for not falling to the trick by answering everything to Yes. Unfortunate for him, the thumbdrive was the backup of his work as the original source was already deleted from another thumbdrive. So this is the classic case of when your backup fails and you have no more primary source. Ironically, a colleage of mine just asked me yesterday on the same problem. So i guess it's a desease when thumbdrive fails one by one.

Lucky for him that i was in a good mood. Opened up EnCase and confirmed that it was gone. Looked up in Google and finally found a tool that might help. Downloaded in and walla, it does the job. The tool was called PhotoRec. It did recover thousands of files, but if you are one of those file naming freaks might get a little panic for a while. It recovers file but you will have to forget about those file names entry. It has it's formats of naming convention and being a technical guy, i wouldn't mide coz that's how the system goes and works. So lucky for my manager that a lot of his files were saved but good luck looking for the right ones as it returns thousands and thousands of files that you may not even know existed. But i recommend the tool. Thumbs up for PhotoRec.

Picture source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xxoos-jal/1449102918/
Do you really think a hot dog can save you in your time of need?

The moral of the story, if you were planning to back up something, make sure the destination is a reliable source. Forget those cute small type usb thumbdrive as that was what caused my manager to be in trouble in the first place. If you were going to choose a thumbdrive, i would recommend a normal size thumbdrive as so far they have never failed me compared to the small cute looking ones that you usually hang together with your set of keys.

ps: I've got to backup my hard drive one of these days.