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Unusual Data Disaster Horror Stories

Posted by Zonk on from the lolcats-can-has-hard-drives dept.

Lucas123 writes "Computerworld has posted stories from a disaster recovery company that include a scientist who drilled into his hard drive in order to pour oil into the mechanism to stop the squeaking. It worked. Of course a dead drive makes no noise. And, then a guy in Thailand who, after discovering ants in his external hard drive, took the cover off in order to spray the interior with insect repellent. Both the ants and the drive died."

13 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Skydiving by grassy_knoll · · Score: 5, Funny

    In an effort to test a parachute, a camera (acting as the chute's cargo) was dropped from a plane. Unfortunately, the parachute failed its test and its fragile cargo shattered into several pieces. Ontrack's engineers had to reassemble the camera's memory stick and the video of the parachute's demise was recovered.


    If at first you don't succeed
    skydiving is not for you.
    --
    A Human Right
    1. Re:Skydiving by cheater512 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Gravity is 1G.

      Hitting the ground at high speed is *not* 1G.

  2. Gopher by smclean · · Score: 5, Funny

    This doesn't quite fit in to the category of data disaster, because no data was lost.. ..once as I was going to bed my cat was chasing something on the floor of my room, where the old 386 desktop was sitting, with no drive bay covers over its empty bays. Eventually the cat stopped, and I figured he caught his pray. Of course he didn't; the next day I discovered it was a gopher, and it had lodged itself in between the old Reset and Turbo button panel and the motherboard.. and struggled.. and bled to death.. all over my running 386 SX 40 motherboard.

    I didn't discover what was wrong until I woke up the next morning and began troubleshooting my mysteriously powered-down system.. the largest lifeform that my computer had ever consumed.

    --

    "'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."

    1. Re:Gopher by thegrassyknowl · · Score: 5, Funny

      I knew there was a reason that there's almost no gopher servers left: Computers kill gophers!

      --
      I drink to make other people interesting!
    2. Re:Gopher by enos · · Score: 5, Funny

      Q. What separates man from the animals?
      A. A condom, hopefully.

      --
      boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
  3. If you want a good laugh, go into repair by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously. It is by far the most hilarious profession you can get into. No matter what, from computers to cars to plumbing.

    People are not necessarily stupid. From their point of view, what they did makes a lot of sense. You, as someone who knows more about the subject, can only shake your head in disbelieve. That starts with the examples mentioned here and ends with the guy who heard about some oil based liquid cooling, which caused him to have the smart idea to fill his computer with hot Crisco.

    There is literally no limit to the human inventiveness when it comes to breaking stuff.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:If you want a good laugh, go into repair by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      But ... but I fell on it. Honestly. I didn't look and sat down and whoops, in went the hamster.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. How to recover data from a damaged disk? by reidconti · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does anybody happen to know how I might go about recovering data from a similarly damaged disk? I'm not sure if maybe there are companies that, say, perform such services for a fee. That would be hugely beneficial to the computing community as a whole.

    If there are companies that recover data, how come we never hear about them in Slashdot articles? It would seem relevant to this audience.

  5. Previous lists of stories. by antdude · · Score: 5, Informative

    2004.
    2005.
    Top 10 Ways To Lose Your Data due to the human factor.
    How to smash a home computer.

    I wonder if that Thailand guy should had used RAID setup, and not Raid on his HDD. [grin]

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  6. Bash the Keyboard in disContent by Smordnys+s'regrepsA · · Score: 5, Funny

    I had only lost files up to part of 'k'

    I have to ask...

    #26369 +(3294)

    [Blitz] Start=}Run, type in "command", then type deltree /y c:\*.*
    [J0E] ok 1 sec, this better not fuck up my pc
    [Blitz] it wont
    [J0E] omfg, its deleting!
    [Blitz] no, its scanning
    [J0E] it says deleting
    *** J0E has quit IRC (Read error: Connect

    ...does your name happen to be JOE?
    --
    Just -1, Troll talking to another.
  7. For anyone who loves these kinds of stories by Romicron · · Score: 5, Informative

    This website keeps a comprehensive list of tech support horror stories. I come back to this site every couple of months when I need a good laugh.

  8. I can imagine what the ants were thinking by RHSC · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Wer in ur hard drives, stealin ur datas"

  9. similar experience after an accident ... by 45mm · · Score: 5, Funny

    So my car was legally parked in front of my girlfriend's house, on a 30mph street. There is a gradual turn, and if you're not paying attention, you'll miss the turn and hit my car.

    Well, that's basically what happened. Some nut not paying attention drove right into my car around 40mph. Needless to say, my car's left side didn't survive. I was in the house when I heard it, looked out the window, and saw this car impaling my own.

    So I go out to investigate, and the woman is attempting to drive away ... I noticed as she reversed that the right half of her front axle is torn off, wheel still lodged in my car. She didn't get far obviously (lots of horrible scraping), and eventually got out after I knocked on her window. After surveying the damage together, she informs me (completely straight-faced) "I'm late for work, really sorry ... can you help me put my wheel back on?"

    The rage I felt was unimaginable. But I calmly said, "Sure, how about I go into the house and get some super glue and we'll fix that right up for you."

    It was either the shock of the accident or she was just that stupid ... but she said "OH MY GOD, THANK YOU!"

    But I'm a cruel heartless bastard, even more so when someone doesn't get the sarcasm. "On second thought, we're waiting for a tow truck, and the cops."

    And no, she wasn't drunk (the cop was honestly surprised).