We have all been there... You have delted en important file by mistake, or you lost all your careful formatting in a 100-page document. Bur relax – we can help.
The document was on my home directory (M: drive or $ HOME)
Good! If the file you are looking for was stored on your home, there are very good chances that you can get it back from the central backup. It depends a bit on how long the file was there before it disappeared. It must have been on your home directory at least for a couple of hours, and it is important that you recover it as soon as possible after you realize that it is gone or ruined.
If you have your home in one of the key "NetApp servers" ?, you can also, in many cases bring it back even with the so-called "snapshot" technique. Ask your local IT staff or the PC room guard to help you. If you can't contact local IT or other IT staff, or if the server is not a NetApp server, send an e-mail restore@usit.uio.no, with the best possible description of the file's name and where it was.
The document was on the hard drive on my office computer, or on my laptop
There is no set backup routine for office computers and laptops. It can be a real challenge to get files from hard drives on computers. Contact your local IT staff for help. A good tip is to save your documents to OneDrive or GoogleDrive, or your home directory, and not on the hard drives on other computers. Files on OneDrive and Google Drive are kept in the cloud, so they are not affected if you lose your computer or it stops working.
The document was a shared volume area for the department / course / research group
Good! If the file you are looking for was stored on a shared volume, there are very good chances that you can get it back from the central backup. It depends a bit on how long the file was there before it disappeared. It must have been on your home directory at least for a couple of hours, and it is important that you recover it as soon as possible after you realize that it is gone or ruined. Ask your local IT staff or the PC room guard to help you. If you can't contact local IT or other IT staff, or if the server is not a NetApp server, send an e-mail restore@usit.uio.no, with the best possible description of the file's name and where it was.
The document was on the web / was a website
If your document was on the UiO web and you deleted it, you can find it on the Trash tab in Vortex (the UiO publishing system). If the file simply is gone or ruined, contact vortex-hjelp@usit.uio.no to get back an earlier version of the document. If the document was on a site that is not in Vortex, contact your local IT staff or restore@usit.uio.no.