As the tech support people know from bitter experience, students are
forever accidentally deleting a vital file or forgetting to save a
file they have spent hours on. Unix is not forgiving of this.
It is impossible to retrieve such files.
There are backups done nightly to disk and files can be restored to you very quickly
off the backup drive, but that doesn't get you back work you have just lost.
Note that it takes a matter of hours and a lot of disk space to backup all the home
directories. It is wasteful of resources if we have to back up (for example) core
dumps, mp3 files, and directories full of downloaded source code which has nothing
to do with coursework - not to mention gaming files. Be aware that such files may be
deleted without notice .
So: make sure you save your work frequently, especially when you
are working under pressure and on something important. (The emacs
editor can keep a backup copy of the file you are editing automatically.)
You can keep copies of your work yourself in your home directory, but
please do not be excessive about this (and definitely, take care not to
recursively backup your home directory).
To make backup copies of whole directories, use "tar" and "gzip".
E.g. supposing you have created a cosc241 directory in your home
directory in which to keep all your 241 coursework:
If you do lose files, please send a message to the tech support group cshelp, specifying the creation and "deletion" dates, and someone will let you know whether your work can be retrieved.