The concept of nightly backups usually isn't all that hard to grasp. At least, that's what this administrator thought until one of the users found a very novel way to restore a deleted file.
The company J.P. worked for ran nightly backups of the file server. It was one of those plain-vanilla deals that ran like clockwork and had saved the day on more than one occasion. So when a user called about a lost file, J.P. wasn't particularly concerned.
"My file... I accidentally deleted it, and now it is gone!" the user sobbed with a hint of surprise in her voice. Imagine that. A file that disappears when you delete it – what will they think of next?
"No worries, we'll restore it from last night's backup," J.P. said. "What is the file name?"
The user told him the file name, but it was nowhere to be found. After some digging around, it turned out that the file had only been created that morning. J.P. told her the bad news: the backups only ran once a day, at night, and since the file had not gone through the backup cycle, there was nothing he could do.
Saddened, the user hung up and that would have been the end of it. Except, of course, the user called back an hour later.
"I've got it!" she said excitedly, "I know how to get my file back!"
J.P. sat up in his chair and raised an eyebrow. Whatever came next would either be genius or, er, less so. His money was on the latter.
"How?" he asked, taking the bait.
"Easy!" she said, pausing a second for dramatic effect. "We'll just wait until tomorrow, then we'll restore it off tonight's backup!"
Lesson learned: When stumped by a technical problem, ask someone in marketing for a true outside-the-box solution.
