Person who didn't save data to the network got fired

[undeterred]

A couple weeks ago my boss asked me to re-image someone's computer. There was nothing wrong with it- we had given him the 64 bit version of XP and it turns out that it caused a lot of extra work for us and didn't really help the user that much. I told the user I would re-image his computer on his lunch hour and reminded him to back up his work to the network and let me know which special software he needed.

An image wipes out everything and puts down a clean up-to-date operating system and programs. If you have data files on the hard drive they will be overwritten.

This person evidently had two months of work stored on the hard drive. I didn't see it and he didn't tell me about it. I could have taken an image of his computer as a backup, but it wasn't required of me so I didn't. The end user screamed at me when he got his computer back, and told me he was going over my head to my boss. I was afraid I'd be fired.

But my boss was fine with it. He's told the managers a million times that we back up network drives and that nothing on the hard drive is safe. We have at least one HD failure a week, where everything is lost, so its the only policy that makes any sense.

The end user was responsible for safeguarding his work. I can't believe he didn't make a copy of it anywhere else.

I know its not my fault, but I feel bad about it.

So be warned, always save your work to the network.

[Deja Q]

1. Agreed. The downside is, many people don't know how to do it.

And the IT department doesn't want to spend the resources to train company staff... (which is stupid, it is relevant and more likely to be a bigger lifesaver... but what do I know? )

[undeterred]

3. We use group policy to place "my documents" on the "U" drive

so the user who just lets things be saved by default will never save anything to the hard drive. This guy had to go out of his way to save it to the root of C. We also have network shares for every single department so that they don't have to mail documents back and forth. I don't know why he went out of his way to save it to the drive and never make a backup.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Hard drives are cheap

If I'm going to let IS anywhere near my system, I pull the hard drives and tell them to put in fresh ones. I can always put the old drives on an external USB box and retrieve anything I need from the old system.

I know I'm paranoid, but my biggest fear is that I'm not paranoid enough.

You did your job; press on. I wouldn't worry about it.

[wain]

4. Similar to Xipe Totec' solution, give the customer a safety net

My company uses dvd-slot drive caddys for laptops and and external hard drive storage for desktop PCs to enable the customer to have total control over their data migration. The customer is provided a new hard drive (pre-built) swapped into the customer PC, placing the old hard drive into the the laptop/desktop storage holder. On the re-built PC the old HD is read as a slave drive. This setup is left with the customer for one week for their data migration from the old to the new HD.

The beauty is that the customer has minimum non-production downtime by dramatically reducing the OS install (pre-build HD) and reducing data movement to 1 copy. All data migration is placed into the hands of the customer and provides time to "remember" to copy files otherwise forgotten. The customers love this process and so do the technicians. Everybody is happy.

And this is a huge time reducer when performing mass PC upgrades, particularly for developers. A small investment in these auxiliary storage holders and extra hard drives saves us a ton of money in reduced customer downtime and dramatic reduction in technician support. Customer service quality is our aim for 10,000 customers.

Please PM me for further details.

:)