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0 pointssidewndr461y ago0 comments

my dad told me about this customer that had a server that made automatic backups each Sunday night. The backup script would backup all the data then eject the tape so the manager could put it in the vault and rotate in the other one from the vault.

When the hard drive failed, they restored the customer to the latest backup. Which was the tape still sitting in the tape drive in the server. It was from the first Sunday night after the system was installed years ago

0 comments

Terr_1y ago

I'm confused, it sounds like you're saying the same tape was being ejected every week and then reinserted without any rotation. But in that case, shouldn't the weekly backup process have failed because the tape was full? Was nobody getting those alerts?

Or do you mean the backup process was fine, but they restored from the wrong media, a very old tape that was about to be overwritten, instead of retrieving the one with last-week's copy?

ender3413411y ago

I read it as they were saying the manual part of the process never happened, so the backup from the first week was just sitting ejected forever and they had no alarming to notify them that the new backup failed to write to tape.

sidewndr46OP1y ago

no, the first Sunday night after the backup process completed. It ejected the tape. It sat there for years until someone realized they needed to restore from the most recent backup. Since a new tape was never inserted, the backup was from years ago.

cutemonster1y ago

What happened afterwards? Was that manager still at the company, at that time?

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