<p>I’m on the side of seeing if he makes the necessary hand-off. It is true that depending on the issue you can loose the information on your hard drive. Generally, you are notified about this when you send the computer into service. It is also true that there are people in this world who can only operate at the last minute under intense pressure and they are a pain in the butt to work with if you are a planner and someone who works hard not to have the pressure of a deadline. At this point it doesn’t sound like it’s your position to speculate anything until the kid misses a deadline. You were to check on progress and you did. You think he’s BSing. Why do you feel the need to ascertain whether he’s telling the truth? If you’ve warned him to get caught up I think you’ve done “your job.” If he hands it off on time then so be it. It’s only if he does not hold up his end that there is a problem.</p>
<p>My son DID loose a year end paper at college when his computer crapped. He learned a hard lesson because he had not saved it to the college network. He got it redone from notes, etc. pulling at least one all nighter. It WAS a team project and his part was writing up the project documentation. Lesson learned the hard way about backing things up. ***** happens.</p>