The Toy Story 2 Disaster: Saved by a Working Mom

Imagine working on a film for years, pouring countless hours into every frame, every character, every detail—and then watching it all vanish in seconds. That's exactly what happened to Pixar's Toy Story 2 in 1998, in what became one of the most terrifying moments in animation history.

Someone on the technical team accidentally executed a command that began deleting the entire movie from Pixar's servers. Files disappeared at an alarming rate—characters, backgrounds, animations, everything. By the time anyone realized what was happening, 90% of the film had been erased.

The Backup That Wasn't There

In a panic, the team rushed to restore from backups. But here's where things got worse: the backups had been failing for weeks, and nobody had noticed. The safety net they'd counted on didn't exist. Months of work by dozens of artists and animators appeared to be gone forever.

This wasn't just any project in trouble—this was Pixar's highly anticipated follow-up to the groundbreaking original Toy Story, scheduled for release in less than a year. The studio faced potential catastrophe.

An Unlikely Savior

Galyn Susman, a technical director on the film, had recently given birth and was working from home during her maternity leave. To make remote work possible, she'd been regularly copying the film's files to her home computer—a bulky Silicon Graphics workstation sitting in her garage.

When the deletion crisis hit, someone remembered Galyn's setup. The team carefully transported her entire computer system to the studio, treating it like a bomb that might go off. They couldn't risk any jostling that might damage the hard drive and destroy their last hope of recovery.

What They Recovered

Galyn's home backup saved most of the movie, though the recovery wasn't perfect:

• The bulk of character models and animations were intact
• Recent changes from the past few weeks were still lost
• The team had to recreate some sequences from scratch
• Production continued, but with significantly improved backup protocols

The incident became legendary in tech and film circles as a cautionary tale about data management and disaster recovery. It highlighted how even industry-leading studios could have critical vulnerabilities in their systems.

The Ironic Twist

Here's the kicker: the version of Toy Story 2 that was nearly lost wasn't even the film we know today. Director John Lasseter wasn't satisfied with the story, and several months after the deletion scare, Pixar made the bold decision to completely overhaul the film anyway. They essentially started over creatively, rewriting and re-animating much of the movie in an intense nine-month push.

So while Galyn's backup saved countless hours of work and prevented immediate disaster, much of what she preserved ended up being replaced during the creative restart. Still, having those files allowed production to continue without interruption while the new vision took shape.

Toy Story 2 released in November 1999 to critical acclaim and massive box office success, becoming the first film to be entirely created, mastered, and exhibited digitally. Few audience members had any idea how close the beloved sequel came to never existing at all—saved not by sophisticated enterprise systems, but by one employee's home computer in a garage.