[wellylug] Installfest flyers

[David Antliff]

On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Jethro Carr wrote:
> Yes, we will naturally have to repartition drives, but there is no point
> mentioning this on the advert - it might confuse or scare some people. A
> lot of people don't even know what a partition is. When they get to the
> event we can explain it to them.

How do you normally handle the issue of responsibility and backups at 
these Installfests? Do you warn attendees to make backups before they 
arrive? Do you have them sign a waiver before you offer to install Linux 
on their machine? I'm just curious as to what measures are taken to 
protect yourselves and your attendees' data. Many people don't realise how 
valuable their data is until it's accidentally lost, and by the time they 
turn up at the venue it's probably too late for them to back it up.

Whenever I work on someone elses machine, I ask them if they have a recent 
backup. If they say no, I ask them if they would be upset if they lost 
everything on the machine. Then I usually have them agree that if they are 
unprepared to make a backup and still want me to continue then if anything 
goes wrong they absolve me of any responsibility. If they don't verbally 
agree to this, I withdraw my offer of assistance.

The reason for this is not because I doubt my own knowledge and skills, 
but because I don't trust the hardware. I've been caught out by hardware 
that has failed mid-task before, and it's very painful to explain to a 
layman that you didn't do anything to delete their 100 gigabyte music 
collection as it was destined to disappear anyway...


-- 
David.