JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) -- Things are back to normal now but that was hardly the case several months ago when a computer technician wiped out a hard drive containing information on a 38 billion dollar account that is one of Alaska residents' biggest perks.

While reformatting the disk drive during a routine maintenance check, the technician mistakenly reformatted the back up drive as well, dumping all the data.

Then it turned that nightly backup tapes were unreadable so they went back to the paperwork itself, which was stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

Using seasonal workers, division staff and lots of overtime, all the lost data was re-scanned into the system by the end of August -- at an added cost of around 200-thousand dollars. A majority of the oil-fund checks -- more than eleven-hundred-dollars per person -- went out on time.

New backups are in place.