In a spot of bother at work.

C:\Documents and Settings\Domain.User\Desktop\My folder with loads and loads and loads of hard work in\This is the folder where I put work that was done in two thousand and seven\Work in here was done for a client named Dave\Daves pictures which he took on holiday in Rome where he met his wife\The day they first met in the famous large stone building and then went on to look at some more famous stuff\IMG_20030938237823723626.jpg

Not even funny how often you see this kind of "structure"
 
Hang on LFN supports up to 255 characters, how big were these files? Did he loose his torrents / warez applications?
What system did you migrate from Windows 95!?

You should be able to worm your way out and your boss should help cover your ass because it hasn't been managed / planned properly.

You would be surprised. Some of the file names are ridiculously long. We are moving from Windows XP.
 
You would be surprised. Some of the file names are ridiculously long. We are moving from Windows XP.

What is the exact situation then? Had he stored things locally and as a result are lost?

Is there a policy to use a network drive which is backed up by the I.T Department?

Reading this thread I think you should be armed to deal with this disciplinary quite effectively now surely?
 
However, I would focus on not "who is to blame" but the more pressing circumstances of "what has gone wrong", "how can you rectify the issue" and "how you can avoid this happening in future". Sort this out and have policy/procedure in place (if not already so) to ensure this doesn't happen again.

I would also emphasize this in your disciplinary.

This.

It's a failing all round. You should have a storage and backup solution implemented that prevents local storage of files and backs up those on the network for easy restoration.

In the event that local files are present, users should be aware of this and make sure they back these up to their networked storage.
 
always check to make sure your backups and present and correct, in fully working order and all data has been transferred across before starting anything. im not convinced at the long file names excuse. they would have to be stupidly long and no one has important files saved with daft long file names. only time I see it is on saved web pages.
 
always check to make sure your backups and present and correct, in fully working order and all data has been transferred across before starting anything. im not convinced at the long file names excuse. they would have to be stupidly long and no one has important files saved with daft long file names. only time I see it is on saved web pages.

Your very wrong. We have had numerous cases of long file names since starting the windows 7 roll out.

We are fully aware of the problem and there has already been one mess up because of it. Luckily on that incident we were able to recover the data.

The only way I can see that it's happened is someone has clicked ok on the long file name error message and not told me. But the company will just come back and say "we did tell you to sit there for 2 hours solid while the data copies".

We also provide four different backup solutions. Network Drives, Symantec Live BackUp, Document Management and portable hard drives for site users. I can't understand why he doesn't have one of these...
 
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What is the exact situation then? Had he stored things locally and as a result are lost?

Is there a policy to use a network drive which is backed up by the I.T Department?

Reading this thread I think you should be armed to deal with this disciplinary quite effectively now surely?

The exact situation is he had all his work stored localled. Had his hdd failed, he'd be buggered. Unfortunately for me, due to massive file names, the data didn't copy across.

I'm going to get the policy out shortly and read but as said above, we do provide numerous backup solutions. One of which he has chosen not to use properly. I don't know why he hasn't got any other backup since we provide 4.
 
Get a new job? Any place that gives you that treatment from one mistake is not worth working for. I know people that have caused network storms from poor patching, san corruption and a weeks down time from unplugging a JBOD. They just put it down to experience and carried on. No disciplinaries.
 
The exact situation is he had all his work stored localled. Had his hdd failed, he'd be buggered. Unfortunately for me, due to massive file names, the data didn't copy across.

I'm going to get the policy out shortly and read but as said above, we do provide numerous backup solutions. One of which he has chosen not to use properly. I don't know why he hasn't got any other backup since we provide 4.

Not your fault, read up 100% on the back-up policys and nail them at the hearing :)
 
They should accept it's a mistake, unelss you have a negative history. And then discuss improving the system.

That is all.

No "legal" team or anything, you don't want to confront your employer in an aggressive manner. Just talk on improvements and the mistake that was made.

S
 
Found one policy so far but the individual in question hasn't signed one yet. It states

8.9 Regular backups must be carried out in accordance with the rules laid down from time to time. Critical information should not be stored in the hard disk of your workstation in case it is lost.
 
Could you not attempt to recover the lost data with Rstudios or something similar? Pointing out there are backup procedures in place and the individual didnt follow them would be point 1, but offering to attempt recovery shows effort and willingness on your part even though you're not at entirely at fault
 
Could you not attempt to recover the lost data with Rstudios or something similar? Pointing out there are backup procedures in place and the individual didnt follow them would be point 1, but offering to attempt recovery shows effort and willingness on your part

We have recovery software and I'm only assuming they have tried it and failed. I have just come back from holiday so don't know what they have tried.
 
It sounds like just a bit of a mess but the user isn't willing to take any sort of blame at all.
You can see where they're coming from, "it's IT's job to make everything work", "I've never had a problem before", etc...
The fact he's not signed the IT policy isn't so great. Why is he even using the computers?

Edit: Take some blame I guess, but raise the issue of the guy not signing the policy, not backing up his work, using an utterly retarded file structure and also not using the document management system.
 
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