The UNSW “home-drive migration programme” does not appear to be going especially well. Last Friday university IT advised students that there was, “emergency maintenance in order to ensure the stability and performance of our systems during the exam period next week.” But by 11 am Tuesday, IT was reporting, “all staff and student home drives were unavailable.”

Things got a bit better that afternoon, but only a bit, after IT called in the cavalry. “Student home drives have been restored by the vendor IBM to a state as they were Friday 1 June 22:00. Files changed or created after that time are currently unavailable.”

But, and it was a very big but indeed, at 11am yesterday “staff drives access is still being addressed. IBM continues to work to restore those newer student files and staff home drives. “

There is all sorts of anguish at UNSW, with staff wondering where work, and research files are, and when, or whether they are coming back.

There was talk yesterday that backups are gone. Surely not, CMM thought, so at 12.30 yesterday afternoon he asked the university’s media unit. UNSW had not responded by CMM’s deadline last night.