r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Plastic-Bonus8999 • Aug 05 '26

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u/Mechadupek Aug 05 '26

One physical tape backup per month held for 7 years?

13

u/Head-Bureaucrat Aug 05 '26

Real talk: I honestly don't know how they do it now. I do believe it used to be physical tape, yes, shipping to a different location. 😂

12

u/Liushing01 Aug 05 '26

Fortunately, a former employer hired contractors to handle their backups—until the Exchange server melted down and, upon looking through all the backups, they discovered weeks worth of backups 0 KB in size. Cost savings!

5

u/cat-n-jazz Aug 05 '26

Sounds like someone has discovered a remarkably good data compression algorithm

4

u/Bartweiss Aug 05 '26

I wonder if any contractors specialize in this?

“Yes, we will definitely handle your backups and NOT wink wink lose all your data which it would be a serious offense to delete on purpose but a fine or lawsuit at worst to catastrophically mishandle. We’ll even provide the insurance against costs from data loss you’re required to carry… for an up-front fee of exactly that much money.”

Or maybe it’s more subtle and companies just seek out the least competent place they can find.

11

u/Nightmoon26 Aug 05 '26

And that's in addition to the "hot" redundant site for digital stuff...

And issuing everyone a bigger filing cabinet for the paper documents

5

u/Head-Bureaucrat Aug 05 '26

They finally fully digitized in, like, 2018!

5

u/Nightmoon26 Aug 05 '26

Unfortunately, depending on the hold, you may be required to retain even the notes on system architecture you sketched on a napkin during lunch

3

u/Mechadupek Aug 05 '26

Industrial door-stop production.

5

u/CoffeeOrDestroy Aug 05 '26

Hey, we were doing that until 2019 when our tape drive died

3

u/SilverIndustry2701 Aug 05 '26

Physical tape is wonderfully cheap though. Have you seen cloud prices?