How an Incidental Backup Saved Toy Story 2

Have you ever lost an important document, video, or photo? Or, perhaps, an entire hard drive full of files that could not be recovered? Things like that happen more often than we think. The easiest way to protect yourself from losing important files is to back up your data.

Yet not everyone does it. One of the best known cases of a near-disaster resulting from accidental data loss - and averted thanks to a no less accidental backup - involved Pixar's Toy Story 2 movie.

How Toy Story 2 Almost Didn't Happen

Here is what happened. As the Pixar animation team was putting final touches on the movie in 1998, one of the employees hit the wrong button. Before anyone could do anything, about 90 percent of the movie's files were gone.

The team did not panic initially, as everyone thought that all the files they had been working on were automatically backed up. The mood changed when they realized that the backup system had not worked during the previous several weeks

Whatever files they had backed up were very old. It meant weeks of lost work, money lost, and deadlines missed.

An Accidental Backup

The movie was saved by Galin Susman, Pixar's supervising technical director at the time. She had a newborn baby and was often working on Toy Story 2 from home. So a lot of the movie's files were saved on her home computer.

Galin's computer was brought to the Pixar studio, cushioned by blankets and pillows. Almost all of the files were then successfully restored. It was a happy end.

The main lesson Pixar learnt from the incident was that a functioning and reliable backup system was an absolute must.

And what about you? Do you have an automatic backup system on your computers? If you don't, it is very easy to set it up. Follow this guide to back up a Windows computer. If you use a Mac, follow this guide.