Re: Piss poor IT management
If the computer won't boot, or the hard drive itself has problems (bad FAT, physical damage, etc.), how would you intend to copy My Documents?
By that count, how would you intend to reformat / reimage? Under those circumstances there's no way - short of specialist services if you are very lucky - to get the data back. The drive is disposed of and a new one fitted. However, in TOA,
Philippe "sent a support dude who promptly reformatted her drive during the evening and reinstalled all for the next day.which implies that the drive was actually ok and with a little care, files could have been recovered.
It's one thing to teach a user a gentle lesson, but real life means that outside of Simon's writings we shouldn't be vindictive.
Like the time a user presented me with a non-working 3½" floppy disc containing the only copy of some (to her) important files. Turned out that not only had she spilled hot chocolate on the thing, but had then left it in the desk drawer for a week, drying out.
One sacrificial case and a gentle wash under the kitchen tap later and IIRC I recovered all except one of those files. Gentle lesson taught (one file to recreate manually), genuine service rendered (my reputation enhanced) and, of course, six months later it's all forgotten :-/
M.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
