Most home directory, shared, public, and website spaces use snapshots. Thus, older versions of deleted or changed files are kept on disk for between three and four weeks and you can get them back without having to email MSI staff.
Note: There is no snapshot for scratch space. If the files were in scratch space, it is not possible to restore them.
For home directory, shared, public, and /website spaces, cd to the home directory, shared, public or website space, and then:
cd .snapshot
Note: You will not see the snapshot directory if you type ls.
Once you are in the snapshot directory, you will see 6 nightly and 4 weekly sub-directories. You can choose to copy the desired version of your file. You can copy it back to your home directory, website space, shared or public space using cp command and then continue to use it as normal.
If you cannot find the desired files in the on-disk snapshots, you can email help@msi.umn.edu with the full path to the files and any details about the content of the file, and MSI staff will look on the tape backups, which contain somewhat longer backups. See the Policies page for data protection and retention policies.