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I do say in my post that I performed a backup. I should have clarified that that was not merely for my benefit while performing the work. My final conversation

I do say in my post that I performed a backup. I should have clarified that that was not merely for my benefit while performing the work. My final conversation with him involved handing off a clearly labeled USB drive, and an explanation that all the data from his laptop was copied to that drive and that he should store it somewhere safe. > Try consoling a few people about how the pictures or files they hold dear are gone forever and then come back and talk about this "dark pattern". I have, and pretty much every time I've had that conversation with someone it ended with them buying a portable storage drive and having learned a valuable lesson regarding the need for a real backup strategy. Microsoft's design choices can be both a benefit and an abuse of its users. There's no excuse here for using important features and functionality of the software as an underhanded marketing exercise.

joshstrange 5mo ago
You described your client as: > not tech literate. Yet you expect him to understand the need to backup his data, manually, to a local device? You want to use a 3-2-1 backup strategy: - 3 backups - 2 different mediums - 1 (at least) offsite A local USB drive satisfies only part of that and doesn't account for the most important (IMHO) offsite requirement. And again, unless there is a some automated process you can assume whatever backup you took will probably be the only one ever done. Perhaps they will backup manually a handful of times but it's just not realistic to expect anyone, even a "computer nerd", to manually backup their files regularly. I'm really not trying to be a jerk here but I fear you have a call in your future about how their computer died and they plugged that "thumb thing you gave us" into the new computer ("actually, do you have a dongle? The new computer only has round holes, not these square ones") but I have the pictures I took last week (/month/year/since you took the original backup).

joshstrange 5mo ago

You described your client as: > not tech literate. Yet you expect him to understand the need to backup his data, manually, to a local device? You want to use a 3-2-1 backup strategy: - 3 backups - 2 different mediums - 1 (at least) offsite A local USB drive satisfies only part of that and doesn't account for the most important (IMHO) offsite requirement. And again, unless there is a some automated process you can assume whatever backup you took will probably be the only one ever done. Perhaps they will backup manually a handful of times but it's just not realistic to expect anyone, even a "computer nerd", to manually backup their files regularly. I'm really not trying to be a jerk here but I fear you have a call in your future about how their computer died and they plugged that "thumb thing you gave us" into the new computer ("actually, do you have a dongle? The new computer only has round holes, not these square ones") but I have the pictures I took last week (/month/year/since you took the original backup).