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Old backup tape labeled 2009 turned out to contain a dead man's files
Was clearing out a storage closet last Tuesday and found a DAT tape with 'FINAL BACKUP' written in marker. No other label. The drive we had still worked, so I loaded it just to see. Turns out it was a small law office's entire case history. The attorney who made it passed away in 2011, and his old partner had no idea this tape existed. I spent the afternoon copying it to a NAS and driving it over to their office. The partner just sat there flipping through PDFs, quiet for like 10 minutes. He said 'I thought these files burned in a flood.' That tape was sitting right there the whole time. Made me wonder how many other backups are just sitting in someone's closet doing nothing. Has anyone else found a backup that people forgot about and ended up being the only copy of something important?
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rivera.hannah3d ago
Yeah we had something similar happen at my uncle's place. He was a contractor and kept every single job file on floppy disks in a shoebox. Found them after he passed and one had the only copy of the original blueprints for a church renovation from 1998. The church had been trying to get those plans for years because the roof was leaking and nobody knew where the support beams were. Took us three days to find a working floppy drive. The church sent us a thank you card with a picture of their new roof on it. Kind of funny how a pile of old plastic can save someone's building. I still have that shoebox in my garage, sometimes I wonder what else is in there.
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