A mistaken command— /bin/rm -r -f * inputted by
one of the animators on the root folder and the movie started deleting
Galyn Susman ... was working from home
she had a full backup¹ on her home computer
Galyn’s home computer ... in 1998 ... stored the data for the feature film
... [it] required 8 people ... to help carry her computer
from her Volvo in the parking lot, to Pixar's studio
¹[her computer contained] the character database,
the foundational code and models for the characters...
They still had to manually review and restore over 100,000 files