What Was Your Worst Computer Accident?

Anonymous Writer writes "I learned years ago to backup regularly and never keep a drink on the same table as a laptop. I accidentally spilled a drink onto my laptop's keyboard where it drained into the laptop's innards, ruining the motherboard, CD-ROM, and hard drive. Thousands of dollars and all my data disappeared in a flash. Considering that there are even people out there that intentionally damage hardware, I was wondering what kind of disasters Slashdot readers have experienced."

Comments

2 hard drives, one power supply

[flinxmeister]

I learned the hard way that backing your data up to another hard drive does no good when the power supply freaks out and fries *everything*...including BOTH hard drives.

Luckily, I had bought matching drives for use in another computer (a total of 4 HDs). By removing the controllers from the good drives and carfully placing them on the fried drives, I was able to get everything back.

Word to the wise, backup and keep off box and off site!

Re:spilling acetone on a sony vaio laptop

[__aagctu1952]

Whoa. Never had that happen to me, and I use acetone quite frequently for cleaning computers... the inside of them at least. It's an extremely good solvent for most things you want to remove from, say, a CPU or a connector (like dirt, grease or thermal paste - especially the residue left by thermal pads from cheap heatsinks is hell to remove normally), it usually doesn't harm what you are cleaning and it isn't that toxic or flammable.

Spilled a couple of drops of lemon juice on an old Microsoft Natural Keyboard once though... and it actually ate deep pits into the plastic. Hmm... maybe I should try and see what acetone does to it - it is a Microsoft keyboard, and this is Slashdot after all ;-)

Re:SQL "Delete" Statement, without a "Where" claus

[daveewart]

Nasty - best way to do a "DELETE ... WHERE" if you're at an SQL console is to do ...

"SELECT something FROM table WHERE conditions"

then, once you're happy that it's showing you the things to delete, backup the command and remove the "SELECT something" and replace it with "DELETE". Much safer :-)

Re:chown -R root:root .*

[dspeyer]

chown -R root:root .*

Ouch. Now I realize that the right expression for this is not easy to come up with. I think .!(|.) would work if you are using bash with extended globing enabled. But can anybody come up with something better with the same result.

This is when I do things like find . -iname '.*'|awk '{print "chown root:root " $0}'|less and then check it by hand. If it looks right, replace less with sh and let it run.

Hope this Helps,

Re:Cheap power supply

[Cecil]

If by reliable components you mean reliable powersupplies, there are a few brands which are well known to be high quality and reliable.

Antec is considered to be the top end for reliability and performance. They contain seperate transformers for the different voltage rails. I have 3 Antec powersupplies in my computers. All have worked great.

Enermax is another maker of very beefy powersupplies. I've got one and haven't had a problem with it.

There's bad news, though. 50% premium? No. Try 200%, if you're used to those shitty $30 powersupplies. A 380W Antec will set you back somewhere in the region of $90. It's worth it, though. Cooler powersupply, cooler system, increased stability due to lower temperature and solid voltage.

Some reviews at Tech-report and AnandTech should give you some baselines to look at.