I didn't have long cables or a fridge nearby, so I thought the peas would be cold enough, and they sort of mould themselves to the drive. So you put the peas in a ziplock to stop condensation, then the put the drive (PCB up) down onto the peas. It's like a cold beanbag for your overheating drive. And afterwards, you can eat the peas!
** TELL US YOUR STORAGE NIGHTMARE STORIES ** WD COMPETITION
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I didn't have long cables or a fridge nearby, so I thought the peas would be cold enough, and they sort of mould themselves to the drive. So you put the peas in a ziplock to stop condensation, then the put the drive (PCB up) down onto the peas. It's like a cold beanbag for your overheating drive. And afterwards, you can eat the peas!
I have a true story I can't tell. It involves a day trip to Bangkok to do a software installation, accidentally wiping the wrong disk, being almost force-fed spicy food and beer, getting concussion, vomiting out the side of a Bangkok taxi, ending in a trip to the hospital for an MRI, flying back a day late (missed my original flight) but having to get up every ten minutes to vomit in the airliner's toilet. Came back, had another MRI, was told I'd bounced my brain off the inside of my skull, had two weeks off. I still have the scar at the back of my head where the golf-ball sized lump came up.
All because my boss insisted we all had to do the same job, even though as a team some of us were better at international travel, some were better at phone support, system admin, and giving training courses. Needless to say, I never went abroad for them again.
All because my boss insisted we all had to do the same job, even though as a team some of us were better at international travel, some were better at phone support, system admin, and giving training courses. Needless to say, I never went abroad for them again.
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you was in short supply of backups that day
Soldato
I see what you did there.you was in short supply of backups that day
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I had a 24TB array of 12 x 2TB WD drives, and had three drives fail at the same time, changing the entire RAID6 volume to RAW, and losing all my data (on an LSI Megaraid 9260-16i)
Thankfully i had a backup of "most" of it (and all important stuff like family stuff) but i did feel like i was going to have a heart attack
I now exclusively purchase WD Reds though, as the warranty is decent, and the RMA experience is worth its weight in gold, especially if you purchase the extra year and upgrade to an Express RMA. Nothing can touch a WD warranty.
Thanks and good luck everyone
Thankfully i had a backup of "most" of it (and all important stuff like family stuff) but i did feel like i was going to have a heart attack
I now exclusively purchase WD Reds though, as the warranty is decent, and the RMA experience is worth its weight in gold, especially if you purchase the extra year and upgrade to an Express RMA. Nothing can touch a WD warranty.
Thanks and good luck everyone
Bam! My external hard drive hit the floor. I can still remember that sound and the skipping sound the drive made after I picked it up.
That was not a good day at all. See, this was a few years ago before I thought about keeping my data backed up. For a lot of my documents, that hard drive held the only copy!
All I could think about were the business plans and documents, the photos with friends and family, and all the other data that had just been lost. And after finding out how much it could cost to restore the data off the damaged drive (if possible), I just went to bed. I couldn’t even think straight. I realized that most of my life was stored on my computer!
Luckily I learned my lesson at that point and started to make periodic backups onto CD-Rs. By periodic I mean “every so often.” I backed some stuff up when I thought about it, but it was a pain to burn CDs every day.
But it didn’t seem like such a pain when my computer crashed the next year! Yet again I fell victim to the computer crash. Luckily some of my data was saved, but not all.
That was not a good day at all. See, this was a few years ago before I thought about keeping my data backed up. For a lot of my documents, that hard drive held the only copy!
All I could think about were the business plans and documents, the photos with friends and family, and all the other data that had just been lost. And after finding out how much it could cost to restore the data off the damaged drive (if possible), I just went to bed. I couldn’t even think straight. I realized that most of my life was stored on my computer!
Luckily I learned my lesson at that point and started to make periodic backups onto CD-Rs. By periodic I mean “every so often.” I backed some stuff up when I thought about it, but it was a pain to burn CDs every day.
But it didn’t seem like such a pain when my computer crashed the next year! Yet again I fell victim to the computer crash. Luckily some of my data was saved, but not all.
Back when I had my first laptop which was some compaq presario thing it came with 40gb of hard drive space.. Now I had this when storage was expensive and a 250gb drive would be 150+ pounds which I couldn't afford.
Now with it being so small I regularly had to delete data and redownload it wasn't an issue until I got some virus which used to eat spare space up on my drive. So for probably 2 years until I worked out how to sort it out I had 2mb of free space with windows going nuts in errors.
Now with it being so small I regularly had to delete data and redownload it wasn't an issue until I got some virus which used to eat spare space up on my drive. So for probably 2 years until I worked out how to sort it out I had 2mb of free space with windows going nuts in errors.
Soldato
I dont get how you got concusion from being force fed spicey food and beer ? Like the story though. Obviously wasnt good for you though. Also dont get the "I have a true story I can't tell" So is this fake ?
Soldato
You didnt have to retell the whole thing again I only wanted to know where the concussion part came in 
My story is true and really quite embarrassing:
I was around 7 years old and had a windows 98 machine that my Dad had just bought. Being my first computer, I loved playing about with it, and had bought a whole lot of pc games to try out. I installed all sorts, and found that the game installers started giving me messages saying that the storage space on the pc was running low; the computer probably only had a 10 gigabyte hard drive.
So having figured out right-clicking and being able to check the properties of folders and files to find out how much space they were taking up. I decided that I would have a look in "My Computer", having clicked through and clicked onto C: drive (which I thought was just another folder), I starting exploring and found that the "System 32" was taking up a decent chuck of space.
So guess what happened next... Yes, I deleted this folder and for some reason the computer was still running fine. I proceeded to switch the machine off and return to it later. After getting back to it later, and starting the machine expecting to game, I got the first BSOD, which etched itself in my mind. I still remember to this day, it read something like "A fatel exception has occurred"..., And this is all I got over and over again.
My dad was not happy, but I learned my lesson lol, don't touch anything belonging to the OS unless you know what your doing.
I was around 7 years old and had a windows 98 machine that my Dad had just bought. Being my first computer, I loved playing about with it, and had bought a whole lot of pc games to try out. I installed all sorts, and found that the game installers started giving me messages saying that the storage space on the pc was running low; the computer probably only had a 10 gigabyte hard drive.
So having figured out right-clicking and being able to check the properties of folders and files to find out how much space they were taking up. I decided that I would have a look in "My Computer", having clicked through and clicked onto C: drive (which I thought was just another folder), I starting exploring and found that the "System 32" was taking up a decent chuck of space.
So guess what happened next... Yes, I deleted this folder and for some reason the computer was still running fine. I proceeded to switch the machine off and return to it later. After getting back to it later, and starting the machine expecting to game, I got the first BSOD, which etched itself in my mind. I still remember to this day, it read something like "A fatel exception has occurred"..., And this is all I got over and over again.
My dad was not happy, but I learned my lesson lol, don't touch anything belonging to the OS unless you know what your doing.
Soldato
Saw some of my colleagues rattle their way down a cobbled path with a 42U rack filled with a HP EVA8100 SAN and storage controllers. They thought it was for decommissioning. It wasn't (it was to be resold) until they'd rattled the disks to pieces.
Think you deserve to win just for this story
Don't want to jinx myself but I've never had any storage fail me but I always keep everything backed up twice so I have that at least.
Soldato
After accidentally deleting your wife's 300+ hour Fallout saves, customer issues just don't seem big anymore! haha
Well if its too late I apologise however I do have a storage disaster story that is totally different it seems to what anyone else has written and it involves a 2nd hand shed (.... Nowhere does it say this has to be computer related)
My cousin, god love him, in his infinit wisdom and desperation to repair, reuse, recycle had purchased through his contacts at work a rather heavy duty, old garden shed that was in surprisingly good nick. Now we're not talking about the typical fragile flimsy rubbish you seem to get from B&Q or Argos these days; no this was a solid timber monster. My cousin gleefully picked me up in his van, drunk at the thought of all the things he could do inside his impressive new man cave but neglecting to impart what would have been some critical, need to know information. Firstly that the owner of said shed had been extraordinarily security concious and had died without letting his brother know where the blasted key was for the padlocks, yes plural.
After about half an hour of helping this chap and my cousin search for the illusive keys we decided that the only thing for it was the use of my cousins extensive and highly impressive tool kit.... After breaking the blade on his cutter he discovered that the locks where infact from motorbikes and didn't fancy trying to cut through them for hours. So we tried the hinges and clips for the pad locks... oh no, he'd used blasted araldite to fix the screws in, oh and longer screws than where required so they could be bent on the inside of the wood preventing their removal.
Next came the attempt at sheer brute strength along with two very large crowbars and some very strong hammers, our new plan, break the stuffing clips or hinges even if it meant damaging the shed, hey he could replace the bits needed. The hinges themselves had too little purchase to get behind but ah ha.... we got the crow bar behind the padlock clip my cousin began wrestling with it, Thwackkkkk "arrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" as the crowbar slipped and some how homed in on his testicles.....
After much crying on his part and much laughing on my part we decided to tackle the entire front panel of the shed itself we managed to make some progress. The panel as heavy as it was began to be prized free, a surprising oversight for such a security concious psychopath, as we began slowly lowering the beast down, neither me nor my cousin or the guy who was selling us the shed noticed the taught piece of wire attached to the inside..... about a 3rd of the way down.... BANG!! A bright flash, a ringing certainly in my ears followed by the sharp stinging sensation the wire and the firing pin gave me when it wrapped around my legs... fortunately my cousin and I managed to step clear of the falling panel, the guy was not so lucky with it landing on his foot bringing forth language that would make russian sailors blush. What it turned out to be was a wire connected to spring loaded contraption resembling the inner workings of a shot gun, the cartridge fortunately being a blank none the less scared the crap out of us.
Having seen to our battle wounds, fortunately no breaks we sat dumbfounded and bemused at which point que the blokes wife coming home from god knows where and asking us why we hadn't just grabbed the keys of the side in the kitchen...
What warranted all that protection you might ask, nothing more than a selection of your usual garden cack old people tend to keep. While the rest of the dismantling went to plan... I couldn't help but smile the following day when I let my cousins attempts at phoning me up for further assistance in putting that blasted shed up ring through to voicemail that I never check. lol
My cousin, god love him, in his infinit wisdom and desperation to repair, reuse, recycle had purchased through his contacts at work a rather heavy duty, old garden shed that was in surprisingly good nick. Now we're not talking about the typical fragile flimsy rubbish you seem to get from B&Q or Argos these days; no this was a solid timber monster. My cousin gleefully picked me up in his van, drunk at the thought of all the things he could do inside his impressive new man cave but neglecting to impart what would have been some critical, need to know information. Firstly that the owner of said shed had been extraordinarily security concious and had died without letting his brother know where the blasted key was for the padlocks, yes plural.
After about half an hour of helping this chap and my cousin search for the illusive keys we decided that the only thing for it was the use of my cousins extensive and highly impressive tool kit.... After breaking the blade on his cutter he discovered that the locks where infact from motorbikes and didn't fancy trying to cut through them for hours. So we tried the hinges and clips for the pad locks... oh no, he'd used blasted araldite to fix the screws in, oh and longer screws than where required so they could be bent on the inside of the wood preventing their removal.
Next came the attempt at sheer brute strength along with two very large crowbars and some very strong hammers, our new plan, break the stuffing clips or hinges even if it meant damaging the shed, hey he could replace the bits needed. The hinges themselves had too little purchase to get behind but ah ha.... we got the crow bar behind the padlock clip my cousin began wrestling with it, Thwackkkkk "arrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" as the crowbar slipped and some how homed in on his testicles.....
After much crying on his part and much laughing on my part we decided to tackle the entire front panel of the shed itself we managed to make some progress. The panel as heavy as it was began to be prized free, a surprising oversight for such a security concious psychopath, as we began slowly lowering the beast down, neither me nor my cousin or the guy who was selling us the shed noticed the taught piece of wire attached to the inside..... about a 3rd of the way down.... BANG!! A bright flash, a ringing certainly in my ears followed by the sharp stinging sensation the wire and the firing pin gave me when it wrapped around my legs... fortunately my cousin and I managed to step clear of the falling panel, the guy was not so lucky with it landing on his foot bringing forth language that would make russian sailors blush. What it turned out to be was a wire connected to spring loaded contraption resembling the inner workings of a shot gun, the cartridge fortunately being a blank none the less scared the crap out of us.
Having seen to our battle wounds, fortunately no breaks we sat dumbfounded and bemused at which point que the blokes wife coming home from god knows where and asking us why we hadn't just grabbed the keys of the side in the kitchen...
What warranted all that protection you might ask, nothing more than a selection of your usual garden cack old people tend to keep. While the rest of the dismantling went to plan... I couldn't help but smile the following day when I let my cousins attempts at phoning me up for further assistance in putting that blasted shed up ring through to voicemail that I never check. lol
Hello folks! Hope you've all had a solid week so far! Many of these have given us a laugh and some made us cringe! Musty Pie's post made us do both though! A clear favourite in the office, I'm happy to say this is the winning post. We can only imagine the sweat that was running down your brow at the time Congratz dude! Message me your delivery info and I'll have the drive sent out for you! Thanks everyone for taking part. You're all what makes this forum great. We'll get another forum comp up soon
Congratz dude! Message me your delivery info and I'll have the drive sent out for you! Thanks everyone for taking part. You're all what makes this forum great. We'll get another forum comp up soon