Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
You tell the company that their data was not retrievable.
The manager of the company is surprised by this bad news. She finds it
hard to believe that the data is completely gone. She asks to have the hard
drive back so that another expert can examine it.
Now you're in a tight spot. Another expert is going to see that the data
was intentionally erased. Your dishonesty has put your reputation at risk.
"Reputation is real important because I get a lot of referral business,"
says Harry Elver. He owns a computer consulting business that does data recovery.
"Sometimes you have to live and learn," Elver says. "Sometimes you make
a mistake and hopefully it's not fatal and you don't make it again."
Fortunately, Elver has never accidentally deleted a client's data. But
it's always possible for a big mistake like that to occur.
"It's very conceivable that somebody else in the office might come by,
and you do multiple things usually on that one machine, and they say, 'Oh,
this is that hard drive where they wanted us to wipe it and take it to the
recycle place,' and they just start the wipe utility and they pretty much
wiped out the stuff and you don't have any chance of getting it back," says
Elver.
"Thank God that hasn't ever happened to me, but could it have? Yeah...
you just never know."