The Wild Goose Chase

As with every 'good' IT Nightmare it all started with a phone call.

"IT Support" I answer one cold and icy evening.

A tumult rolls over the airwaves in a heavily accented voice. The guy is talking so fast I cannot understand a word he is saying. I wait for the torrent to end, every syllable merging into the next. I ask for him to repeat himself and it takes a good four attempts to figure out that he is having little issue with his speakers. In other words: No sound. I was wishing my phone was having the same problem.

I try to get him do a few small checks, but another heavy incomprehensible sentence, is the clincher. Armed with cables and a heavy heart I head over there in the cold; head down to the wind and nimbly avoiding the black pools of ice. It was going to be a long night. Turns out this is was going to be a walk in the sun compared to what was coming.

Data Restore

"Some of my files have disappeared" announces a lady on the phone.

"Disappeared?" I ask.

"Yes they are just gone" she tells me.

"Are you sure they haven't been deleted or moved to another folder?"

"Well I was doing a little 'housekeeping' yesterday" she confesses. "Can you get them back?"

"Where were they saved to?" I ask.

"On the server" she says.

"Which one?"

Faulty "Data Ports"

"There's a big meeting in the board room, but they are having trouble loading the PowerPoint presentation, the laptop you lent them has faulty data ports." complains a lady, rushing in to our office with the utmost urgency.

So I make my way down to the board room, taking a spare laptop with me in case I need to make a switch. As I enter the room, fifteen accusing pairs of eyes in expensive suits set themselves upon me as if I am personally responsible for the fault.

I make my way over to the laptop as the eyes follow and receive a full 30 second ear bashing from the red-faced presenter, making sure I was up to date on his professional diagnosis. "My flash drive won't work in your laptop, the USB ports are faulty... etc etc etc..."

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."