Pixar Rescues Toy Story 2 from Near Deletion

Are you protecting your data during production? Pixar learned the hard way with Toy Story 2. In 1998, an animator accidentally entered a command to delete files, resulting in a catastrophic loss of assets. Panic set in as the team discovered that only 10% of the film remained. Despite tape backups, the restoration was incomplete and corrupt. The fate of Toy Story 2 hung in the balance until Supervising Technical Director Galyn Sussman remembered her backup version of the film. The team worked tirelessly to manually restore the remaining assets, scanning and verifying 30,000 files over a weekend. The lesson? Don’t get caught without a plan. Proper data protection is critical to the success of any project. Learn from Pixar’s mistake and systematize your backup and archival process.