Our backup are done early in the morning, Mon-Fri. All files, including incoming email, are backed up. The Monday backup is thus done just after the weekend has ended.
Roughly, we keep:
Caution: If you create a file or receive an email message on Friday or Saturday and delete it on Sunday, then it can't be recovered since there is no backup on Saturday or Sunday mornings; on those days there's no staff to load the tape. For the same reason, no backups are made over Christmas Break or other University Holidays.
If you need to recover a file from a backup tape, please send a detailed message to: manager AT math . upenn . edu Only our system administrators can perform recoveries. They are bound by a strict professional code of ethics to respect your privacy. They never access anyone's private files, including email, without their explicit request and assent.
In greater detail, our backup schedule is:
Example Inventory List:
LEGAL NOTE:
As has been tested in court cases, under special conditions court orders can require us to surrender these backup tapes as evidence. Thus, although internally we view your computer files as absolutely private, we cannot guarantee that in the face of court orders. (The same applies to any internal documents, such as grading records and letters of recommendation).
There have been cases at UC Berkeley where departments have been subpoenaed to turn over all email for the prior 5 years concerning certain individuals and the University has been forced to hire additional staff to cull through 5 years of backup tapes to extract just the relevant messages and protect the privacy of the other data on those tapes.