They probably had an advanced distributed snapshot backup system. Where any and all employees that used the file in the last 10 years had a version of it saved from a point in time–potentially even on their personal machines or as email attachments to their personal emails.
I had a client as of a couple of years ago with a custom fronted software build on top of an access mdb database running on windows 98 continuously since 2000. They had been backing it up onto a 18 year old 1GB flash drive every night for years. Their interest was exactly zero in upgrading to anything newer.
I got called to a 12 year old server with a failed HDD once. They said no problem we have a daily backup. Just put in a new drive and restore from tape.
The tape wouldn’t read. I took it out of the drive and noticed some brown specs and dust falling out.
The tape was clear, like scotch tape. They backed up daily to the same tape for over 10 years without verification. The remnants of the magnetic layer was scattered inside the drive.
That client became pretty sad pretty fast.
I once worked for an organization that maintained a 10+ year old single excel file with no discernable backups for regulatory data.
The bar is low.
They probably had an advanced distributed snapshot backup system. Where any and all employees that used the file in the last 10 years had a version of it saved from a point in time–potentially even on their personal machines or as email attachments to their personal emails.
Close. Each employee had a tab.
I had a client as of a couple of years ago with a custom fronted software build on top of an access mdb database running on windows 98 continuously since 2000. They had been backing it up onto a 18 year old 1GB flash drive every night for years. Their interest was exactly zero in upgrading to anything newer.
I got called to a 12 year old server with a failed HDD once. They said no problem we have a daily backup. Just put in a new drive and restore from tape.
The tape wouldn’t read. I took it out of the drive and noticed some brown specs and dust falling out. The tape was clear, like scotch tape. They backed up daily to the same tape for over 10 years without verification. The remnants of the magnetic layer was scattered inside the drive. That client became pretty sad pretty fast.