I had rented some video equipment to film an edit a commercial for a client. The camera had to be used to capture the footage to my computer via firewire. I returned the eqipment once the video was captured. After editing, I converted the final product to a Quicktime file. I went to cleanup the computer's (my personal computer) hard drive and started deleting what I thought were unncessary files associated with the final video. I had actually deleted some of the actual timeline content and couldn't make any changes to it without the original file. So, I had to re-rent the equipment and capture the content again. The two-day deadline turned into a week, and the client was not real happy with me. I apologized, but they weren't real accepting of it since it was a commercial that should have been airing three days prior to them receiving the final copy. Boy, did I learn a lesson.

For work I often have to update a spreadsheet every month. I normally have to open the previous one, update it and then save it as a new one. I cannot tell you how many times I have forgotten to rename the new one and have saved it as the old one.

A simple are you sure, when saving, type of question would have saved me from overwriting an old file. A backup of the older file would save me tons of problems!

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This type of incident has happened to me more times than I can count. However, using my HP EX475 and the Keep Vault add-in, I am protected. Should I ever be editiing a file directly on the server and make a mistaqke while saving, I can simply open Keep-vault and bring the original(s) back down to the server. Now if I could only find that copy of my resume that i had been working on before signing up for Keep Vault.....

-Martin

EX475 + 5TB, 2 GB mem, LE-1640, External DVD (USB)
PC's: Vista64 Biz, Vista Ultimate (32)
Laptops: Vista Home Premium (32), XP Home SP3
Network: DLink DIR-855

I was backing up some pictures to DVD, then deleting them, when I went back to the DVD's one of them did not burn properly, 2GB of photos down the drain!

egads. agreed--- nothing is more irritating than doing something like over-writing something you didn't mean to over-write.

Having that backup copy resting on the server for fast and easy restoration is worth it. It beats diggin through disc backups any day.

my personal favorite that I tend to do with pictures... when i'm putting together a folder of pics I need to edit for my mom's digital frame, they all need to be cropped and resized and whatnot... then 2 months later I have no idea where the resized files come from so I move them back to the original folder and destroy the originals in the process (sigh). it is indeed nice to have that server there so I can immediately correct my bad.

I accidently deleted an entire Powerpoint presentation that I was due to present at an important meeting the next morning.
Fortunately, I had emailed it to a friend for his comments the previous day and he still had it in his inbox, so he was able to send it back to me...
I wouldn't recommend this as a back-up startegy, but it saved ny bacon that time!

It is great to see that the Media Server includes snapshot capability natively. We use a combination of Acronis, Backup Exec System Recovery imageing/snapshot software and R1Soft and Sonic Wall Continuous Data Protection servers to make sure that weare "oops" proof from users who are quick to hit the delete key or overwrite critical files.

Adding this kind of featre to a "home" media server, where often the only copy of the priceless photo will exist is a big win for Consumers.

I deleted our Florida vacation files from our computer to clear some space, as I had backed up the originals to a cd. A few months later when I went to view the vacation pictures on the cd, I found that the cd could not be read on any disc player and all of our Florida pictures ended up gone forever. There wasn't anything I could do about it, and to this day, I truly regret the loss of those pictures.

I had to create a final project for my web authoring class. I had to use multiple files until I did the finished product. Unfortunately, I saved over the draft of my page and had to start all over again. I learned to pay attention to how I save data and make backups of everything.

Once there was a time when the number of devices you could attach to the computer was limited by a scsi connection. You needed scsi voodoo powers to get a bunch of devices to work. In these primitive times, backups were an essential part of computer use, as files could be eaten by the scsi zombies at any time.

Today we have clean USB conntections which allow data to smoothly travel from one device to another without fear of breaking. I still back up files at work, but the uncertainty of the past is gone. I haven't lost a file in so many years, I can't come up with a colorful anecdote.

I was trying to do a tax plan for a client and I copied in another client's information. Luckily the name doesn't come over. The client took it as a good luck wish since the other plan made about double what they did.

OK, I'm a professional software engineer, and I've had more than my share of these types of things. The worst case I can think of is a file that corrupted when it was saved to version control software. We didn't realize it was corrupted until a couple of months later when we tried to build a new version of the software. At that point, the original file was long gone. After all it was saved in the version control software, so it was safe. Right? Wrong. When we asked the local IT people to get the backup, the tape was missing. We had to go back and reconstruct it from a print out of the previous build; yes we still had print outs back then.