<p>An “incomplete” is absolutely called for here. Can you go to the English professor with her, to back up her story?</p>
<p>I’m very suspicious about the police telling her “nope no access, we can’t have you harming the files!” Only a completely incompetent police department would work with the actual hard drive without first making a (bit by bit) copy. After all, the police computer forensics personnel - like all people - are never perfect, so in case they make a mistake, they’ll still have the original.</p>
<p>Get them to make a copy of the copy…their making any excuse about possibly losing data is absolute BS.</p>
<p>CNP55 - it would be worth your employees while to contact the ‘legal’ representative of her school - schools usually have an attorney on retainer who can advise - but not represent students - with school or personal related issues. This is one of those times. This attorney may be able to contact the police to find out what the appropriate process would be to obtain the files needed - under supervision - or may suggest that the DA be contacted immediately regarding this situation. </p>
<p>This student also needs to have a talk with her advisor and all of her profs to see what remedies could be possible as well - ASAP.</p>
<p>There are programs like “go to my pc” <a href=“GoToMyPC : Page Not Found”>GoToMyPC : Page Not Found; and <a href=“SSM”>SSM; and “pcanywhere” that let you access computers remotely. I am not a technophyle, so I dont know if it works on laptops as well as desktops (which is your employees computer?) and I don’t know if it has to be installed on the computer you are trying to access (thought that’d make sense; otherwise you could get into anyones computer), but its worth checking out. </p>
<p>For what its worth,something similar happened to the son of a friend of mine and yes, they came in and confiscated the computer. I dont know how long it took to get it back.</p>
<p>Those programs require that they are installed onto the other computer as well, and with the police holding it, it isn’t possible to do so. I use a similar program though, RealVNC, and it works on any computer as long as you make sure the proper ports are open (such as if using a router on your network). </p>
<p>Plus, all it does is give you access to move around on your computer via TCP/UDP, and saving files while accessing it would just save it onto the far away hard drive. Also, to transfer the files, she would have to be emailing them all to herself through the VNC. </p>
<p>What I do is use my flash drive (1 GB), to save all of my important documents on. I back up as well to a second hard drive all of my documents, which is actually my backup server. I suggest that in the future, she should get a large flash drive, though I doubt she would need more than 512MB, and just use it to carry her documents with her, and save them on multiple computers. </p>
<p>I have not lost any data yet from my computer, even after crashes this way, and I plan to continue doing so while in college.</p>
<p>Oh well, it was a thought… As I said, I figured it’d have to be installed on both systems. Otherwise, it’d be awfully easy to hack into computers.</p>
<p>The student probably needs to have an attorney go to court to move to return the property. The procedure for doing this is going to vary from one state to another, and the time frame would probably be 3-4 weeks - plus there is no guarantee that she would win the motion. But that would get the matter in front of a judge and the attorneys for the police or the district attorney would have to show why it was necessary to retain the property. </p>
<p>Example: <a href=“http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/search_docs/sect7.htm[/url]”>http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/search_docs/sect7.htm</a>
** Returning Seized Computers and Materials<a href=“in%20Federal%20cases”>/b</a>
Anyway, this is a problem that needs to be resolved by consulting and hiring a real lawyer.</p>
<p>She has asked for incompletes in all her affected courses, and received an extra 4 weeks to complete the work. She tells me that her parents have gone to bat for her and gotten nowheres. The college has NOT been helpful – must see the Dean of Students and no appointments with the Dean of Students available until next semester. (UNbelieveable. Not fair. Probably she could find someone, but she’s not going to.) </p>
<p>She does have hard copies of all the papers’ rough drafts (the second draft and final drafts were on the laptop) and says she can recreate from that but it will be a good bit of (unnecessary) work.</p>
<p>She will have a new laptop next week at a good price via her father’s company discount.</p>
<p>I am willing to do whatever I can to help her – and I have advised her of the advice you all have given. I agree that she should retain an attorney to go to bat for her – but she feels that she’s out of time and really cannot afford it. </p>
<p>So – there’s the update. Thank you all for your help.</p>
<p>Well, it won’t help your employee, but this thread is a good reminder to us all of the importance of backing up all important work on a computer. It could just as easily have been another equally devastating issue: theft of the computer; hard drive crash, etc. </p>
<p>Also: good reason to protect computers with passwords, etc, to prevent unauthorized use. This could also end up being a problem with dorm roommates.</p>