Re: "years of work and important documents"
I'm not disagreeing with you here but she's go to take on the lion's share of responsibility here. As usual they've never tested the backup and probably never even checked it once it was installed and "working". It's the usual lazy way of backing up data and most of us (myself included) only improve in this area once we've make a royal cock up of it in the past or seen someone close to us lose months of work.
You don't need to be an IT pro to check backups, no more so than you need to be a household security expect to set an alarm, but as with house alarms it's only one thing that may/may not work and it's best to remember that locking the door and checking you've got your valuables out of site is best. similarly with backup checking it's actually working and having a "oh shit I lost everything" plan is best.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
