Post - Oops.. Sorry I just wiped out $38 billion

-HAL- · March 21st, 2007

Quote:

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - Perhaps you know that sinking feeling when a single keystroke accidentally destroys hours of work. #1 Now imagine wiping out a disk drive containing information for an account worth $38 billion.

That's what happened to a computer technician reformatting a disk drive at the Alaska Department of Revenue. While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account -- one of Alaska residents' biggest perks -- #2 and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well.

There was still hope, #3 until the department discovered its third line of defense, backup tapes, were unreadable.

.......

And the only backup was the paperwork itself -- stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

We had to bring that paper back to the scanning room, and send it through again, and quality control it, and then you have to have a way to link that paper to that person's file,'' Skow said.

Half a dozen seasonal workers came back to assist the regular division staff, and about 70 people working overtime and weekends re-entered all the lost data by the end of August.

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/sil...s/16939885.htm

Someone's having a REALLY bad day at the office..