Restoring "LOST" Data

One day my colleagues and I received a visit from a young lad who had "lost his work" and was asking if we could retrieve his files from backup.

Upon asking where the data was saved he said "My USB Stick."

Sadly (I explained before my colleague stepped in) we don't back up users USB Sticks as it is not possible for us to do so. But I had some recovery software that may do the trick.

"Let me have your USB drive and I'll give it a go." I offered.

"You can't" he said "I have lost it. That’s why I want you to do a restore of my files."

We couldn't make him understand that we couldn't restore from something that we hadn't physically got.

Needless to say, he didn't get his data back and walked out of our office rather red in the face. Our office was left in hysterics.