What is the worst tech catastrophe you have experienced?

[Pickles von Brine]

What is the worst tech catastrophe you have experienced? Dropped a drive with your PHD thesis and had to have it recovered? Spilt liquid on your laptop right before a meeting? Did a minor technical glitch at work take down your entire environment? 

Mine was when I had lost my RAID 0 on my gaming machine years back. One of the drives ate itself and I had a college term paper on it. Now? I am paranoid and have like 6 backups XD
 

[ImAskywalker]

Right now is RAM failure and some GPU Blinking problems, seem restarting is always my option but I'm still anxious about my PC

[da na]

Not something I had caused, but a couple months ago I was restoring a Windows 98 laptop with a 4327 megabyte HDD. Drive spun up but heads wouldn't move so I cracked the drive open and it seems to have had a severe head crash. Heads scraped against the platter and part of one had broken off, it fell out when I opened the drive (can include pics if wanted)

[TempestCatto]

I had studied animation for a year in college. It was extremely hard for me (lack of patients and skill). But I had finally managed to animate steam coming off a hot cup of coffee. It looked really shitty, but I was proud of it. Well, I was swapping the HDD in my laptop for an SSD. I figured I could pop the HDD as a secondary drive into my desktop and just get my data off of it that way (why not use a usb flash drive? Well hindsight is 20/20). I took the HDD out of my laptop, and was walking it over to my desktop, when I pulled a classic Linus. I dropped it on the hard floor underneath me. I freaked out, quickly grabbed the drive, put it in my desktop, got it to power up, but couldn't get it to be detected. I tried the freezer method, to no avail. I eventually gave up. All that hard work, time, and effort, now lost forever because I was careless.

 

I haven't touched digital art or animation since. While it fascinates me as much as a train to a five year old, I just don't have the motivation, time, or skill to pursue it any longer. Who knows where that path in life would have taken me had I not dropped that damn drive...

[markwoll]

On Thursday afternoon one of my old database servers holding timeclock and leave data died.

Due to an oversight the most recent backup was 3 weeks old.

I had a VM ready in advance to migrate the data to but hadn't gotten to it yet.

The data drives were good but I couldn't find a system that could boot and mount the Centos 4 ( yep ) raid pair successfully.

Thought it was going to be the VM with old data until the next morning when I remembered an old sever that was about as old.

The drives booted up, databases intact, just lost 3 hours of data. Crisis averted. We migrate to the VM on Monday when a developer returns from vavcation.

 

The other memorable one that happened a about 15 years ago when a sprinkler head went off in our server room ( yeah, live water ).

Took out a finance database server, an email server, and damaged a major database server.

That was bad for a couple of weeks.

[Pickles von Brine]

13 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Not something I had caused, but a couple months ago I was restoring a Windows 98 laptop with a 4327 megabyte HDD. Drive spun up but heads wouldn't move so I cracked the drive open and it seems to have had a severe head crash. Heads scraped against the platter and part of one had broken off, it fell out when I opened the drive (can include pics if wanted)

I am use to be a data recovery engineer. I would LOVE to see this!!!!

[Pickles von Brine]

4 minutes ago, markwoll said:

On Thursday afternoon one of my old database servers holding timeclock and leave data died.

Due to an oversight the most recent backup was 3 weeks old.

I had a VM ready in advance to migrate the data to but hadn't gotten to it yet.

The data drives were good but I couldn't find a system that could boot and mount the Centos 4 ( yep ) raid pair successfully.

Thought it was going to be the VM with old data until the next morning when I remembered an old sever that was about as old.

The drives booted up, databases intact, just lost 3 hours of data. Crisis averted. We migrate to the VM on Monday when a developer returns from vavcation.

 

The other memorable one that happened a about 15 years ago when a sprinkler head went off in our server room ( yeah, live water ).

Took out a finance database server, an email server, and damaged a major database server.

That was bad for a couple of weeks.

Jesus XD

BTW, in the future check out a program called UFS explorer. If that was a software raid array it would likely just detect and mount the array no problem. It is a bit pricey though. You could also check R-Studio. 

And if you don't know the raid parameters, you can use reclaime raid recovery: http://www.freeraidrecovery.com/
Have it give you the parameters for the raid array then pop it into R-Studio and extract your data. 

[da na]

1 minute ago, Pickles von Brine said:

I am use to be a data recovery engineer. I would LOVE to see this!!!!

The dusty platter is just bc it’s been sitting open on a shelf for a while. The part of the head that contacts the first platter is completely missing (that’s what fell out when I opened the drive) and the other heads squeak loudly when moved on to the platter so they seem to be making some sort of physical contact.

[Pickles von Brine]

Can you blow off the dust and take a picture of the platter?  @Mel0nMan

[The_russian]

I was asked to make a slideshow for a major family event (being the tech guy in the family is just so much fun, isn’t it). I gathered photos, scanned older photos that had not yet been scanned, photoshopped the defects on them like rips, ended up having a couple hundred photos. Put them into a slideshow, chose out non-distracting transitions and background music. Put it into a format that would automatically loop the slideshow when it finished. Spent a total of a few days on it, but ended up with something I was satisfied with given a time constraint. Everything went fine, I made sure everything was backed up as usual. A few months after the event someone remembered about the slideshow and asked for a copy of it. No problem I thought, I have it saved on my computer… go to get the file and the folder is gone. The drive is still fine and all other folders are there, but the folder with that project was just gone. No problem I thought again, I have it backed up to another drive… and the folder is also missing from there. I have no idea how the folder managed to disappear from 2 different drives, yet here we were. I felt terrible and decided to remake the slideshow since I was the one responsible for it, plus how would it look if the tech guy of the family managed to lose some files... anyways spent another few days on it including rescanning photos and photoshopping them again, but finally remade the whole thing. As I was getting a few different drives to back the files up to so I didn’t have to repeat this again, I noticed a folder with the original project on it… FML this whole time there was a copy of the original folder on one of my external drives I must have forgotten to check. I still don’t know how/why the files disappeared from two different drives.

[tkitch]

I was at work, playing with a spare cisco router, learning how some of the commands worked, etc. etc.

 

I'd done a couple things wrong, and needed to wipe the config.  NBD.  Factory Reset + Wr Mem commands.  Problem solved.

... whatdya mean nobody in the office has internet?

 

... whatdya mean I'm plugged into the live firewall?  OOOOOPPPPPSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

 

(Yes, I had been smart, and did have a full backup of the config, so the downtime was under 15 minutes, but HOLLLLEEEEEEE SHEEEEIIIIIITTTTTT)

[Arika]

Two things

 

A powered USB hub shorting and frying:

• Mechanical keyboard ($120AUD)
• TrackIR 5 camera ($350AUD)
• External HDD ($80AUD)
• Itself ($35AUD)

 

Impromptu liquid cooling a laptop using a can of pepsi.

[SlashedM]

I had a Intel branded H67 that I was diagnosing for my In Law. Originally was told that it was CMOS, I replaced it, nothing happened. Had some spare working DDR2, so I swapped it, and it caught on a small fire. 

[da na]

8 hours ago, Pickles von Brine said:

Can you blow off the dust and take a picture of the platter?  @Mel0nMan

Sure, the upper platter isn't scratched though. 

[FRD]

GPU dying less than 2 months ago out of nowhere and exactly during the GPU shortage. When using the PC, suddenly the PC turned off. After turning it back on, there was no signal and the GPU didn't have any light and the fans didn't spin at all. I hoped it was the PSU, but nope. GPU lasted only 4 years since I bought it brand new, while my old GTX 550 Ti lasted like 8 years (and still works).

[Lurick]

Watched as someone dropped (list price) around $100K of network linecards onto the floor. All the cards were damaged and had to be sent for replacement.

[Vishera]

PSU failure frying:

CPU ($150)

Motherboard ($70)

Hard drive ($50)

Total: $320 of damage

 

The GPU and RAM survived

[Levent]

These all happened exactly a year ago. I cracked the cpu die of my original 3570K I bought in 2012 after attempting to direct die cool it with a brand new PF120. I thought no worries and just ordered a new one from China. Meanwhile I got a $3.5 Celeron to use my system while waiting for the new cpu to arrive BUT putting that CPU in made me realise I also damaged the CPU socket. At this point I thought might as well send the motherboard in for repair, so I sent it in got the socket replaced. I plugged the new 3570K in and realised I got no sound, sigh. I got the replacement 3570K and it was a piece of shit and needed delidding instantly. So I delidded that and put the cpu in... 10 seconds later I realised the guy who replaced the socket on my motherboard put a CPU retention clip back and I just tightened my cpu and cracked it AGAIN.

In a matter of 45 days I killed:

2 3570Ks

Z77A-GD65.

A VS450.

[iBoolGuy]

May be a boring reply BUT, I'm paranoid when it comes to my tech... honestly even anyone-I-know's tech. I think I was born paranoid careful when it comes to tech, like subconsciously careful.

 

[Justaphysicsnerd]

11 hours ago, Pickles von Brine said:

What is the worst tech catastrophe you have experienced? Dropped a drive with your PHD thesis and had to have it recovered? Spilt liquid on your laptop right before a meeting? Did a minor technical glitch at work take down your entire environment? 

Mine was when I had lost my RAID 0 on my gaming machine years back. One of the drives ate itself and I had a college term paper on it. Now? I am paranoid and have like 6 backups XD
 

Mine was when my mom literally crushed my laptop by throwing it ----> Moral : My Mother is Stronk ...oh and BTW it had all my lectures and notes (+assignments) on it

[jones177]

Hurricane Andrew.

 

Back then I mainly did 3D animations to video(1992). 

 

I lived in Miami but was in the UK when the storm hit. The neighborhood my apartment was in was intact but had no phone and no power. I could not get a flight back for another 2 weeks so I was worried about the state of my computers.

Back then video was very expensive to do and the two computers I used were valued at $14,500 and 21,00. I had computer insurance(was not covered by home insurance) to cover any lose but that did not cover the lose of data. 

 

I had the computers covers, unplugged and up high in case of flooding so I was optimistic.   

 

When I got back the computers looked fine along with the frame accurate VCRs I used for recording but nothing worked. 

I forgot to unplug the UPSs and they were toast. The VCRs were plugged into them and they were toast as well.  The computers were not plugged in but they did not work either.

 

It turned out that the hard drives were damaged by static electricity but the rest of the computers were fine. 

The insurance company replaced all the damaged equipment but it marked the end of the 3D to video work I did. 

Fortunately design work picked up and that is what I eventually ended up doing full time.

 

   

[elfensky]

My DS415+ NAS wasn't turning back on after my dorm lost power. I don't have the money to afford to duplicate all that data for a "true" backup, so the next few hours were some of the most nerve-whacking of my life as I try to google and diagnose the issue. To be fair, most of it is just music/movies/pictures/games, and I duplicate and do a real backup of truly irreplaceable data, but that's media I've collected and curated over more than a decade now, so it'd be painful to loose.

Turns out it wasn't a fried component, but a known issue with the CPU on those devices, with some clock circuitry getting wrecked and not letting the rest of the system to boot? You can read more if you google "Atom C2000 bug". 

I was about to loose hope but... I come across a thread on the Synology forums about my specific NAS. There is a fix. But it requires me disassembling the NAS and soldering on the motherboard.. potentially completely wrecking it. That was some stressful soldering, but I must say, it was the best solder job I ever did in my life. And it whooshes back to life. Fanspin ayy!

 

I've since gotten a rack, and am saving up money to make my own Unraid server, and put the DS415 at my parent's house for off-site backup.

[danomicar]

2 minutes before a job interview I spilled water directly into my USB ports and couldn't get my headset to work. Mid interview I had to get on the floor behind my PC and use one of the ports on the motherboard instead.

 

Still got the job though!

[sub68]

I have two.

 

I smashed the screen of my old laptop, because I was stupid enough to put a chromebook on the keyboard of the laptop, than I smashed th lid.

 

second one is

Ok, some context this is a old kingston ssd a ssd now 200 128GB.

These are known for some failures.

Well one time during a vacation I think a quarter of my photos got messed up.

So that led me into the habit of leaving pictures for as little as 2 days on it than edited them than dump them to a hard drive that was reliable (WD blue 500GB)

This SSD holds movies and other references that are backed up so I had no problems except some vacation photos.

[Zodiark1593]

Took place at about 2006, the PC was an HP with an Athlon XP 3000+, Win XP, 512 MB of RAM, and a 160 GB Hard Drive. Still have it actually, though it’s in pieces to save space. The original case was bulky and I had no space for it. 
 

My younger sister was watching anime on some pirate site on the family PC and parents were out. No idea what occurred, but things went quite awry, and the PC no longer would boot. It would just go straight to BSOD. 
 

Thinking fast, I did a System Recovery from the recovery partition. Couple hours later, the PC was back up. My parents, thankfully being less savvy than I was at the time, noticed only a different background and the icons in different places. 
 

Since then, I’d resolved to learn more about computers.