How to Scare the Living Crap Out of Andrew in 5 Easy Steps

April 26th, 2005 - 15:27 | 5 comments

Cause his server to explode over the weekend.
Have the server hard drive die in a fit of pique.
Configure the backup software, by default, to compare backup contents with what exists on your hard drive, then show only the files that can be updated. This is a very small list when the backup is opened on a different computer. This will cause much self-loathing when Andrew thinks he has messed up the backup system.
Have all data recovery utilities display a happy list of all files that can be recovered from the hard drive. Ensure that the HD is so very screwed that said programs generate errors on half of the files, and produce corrupted versions of the rest.
All of Andrew’s parents’ company emails, data, documents, accounts and payroll information would seem to have been lost. Andrew will now contemplate methods of suicide.

Thankfully, I eventually discovered my mistake regarding number three. A brief stomach-pump later and I’m restoring a backup from Saturday night. Any emails downloaded on Sunday are likely to be gone for good, though, so if you sent anything important please do re-transmit. I’m pretty sure that both the PSU and HD are down for the count; I haven’t had a good play with the motherboard yet.

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5 Responses to “How to Scare the Living Crap Out of Andrew in 5 Easy Steps”

1 Ben Apr 26th, 2005 at 10:13 pm

ugh, that was a bit of a close call! Thank god for backups
definitely want to be thinking about distributed storage and RAID I think!

makes me think I really need to get something more effective sorted out myself…hmm…
2 Ed Apr 26th, 2005 at 10:34 pm

Go get yourself a UPS as well… seriously, how much is the data worth in comparison?

So you need a UPS, a top notch PSU, and a redundant RAID array….
3 Andrew Apr 27th, 2005 at 11:20 am

Yeah, RAID is definitely a good idea! I don’t ever want to have to go through that again. A UPS is a good plan too, although if it was the PSU that nuked everything it may not help too much in a similar situation (nothing else on the power adapter failed).
4 Ed Apr 27th, 2005 at 7:37 pm

Could it have been a power spike which caused the PSU problem though? UPS’s regulate the supply smoothing positives and negatives…. either way you get to sue them if something screwey happens :0

I always wondered why UPS was UPS…. and I realised why… PSU spelled wrong !
5 Andrew Apr 27th, 2005 at 11:57 pm

I just don’t know what happened atm. I can’t see a power spike frying the PSU but nothing else, especially as it’s a surge-protected extension board too. I don’t get how the PSU could have died, leaving everything else working *until* I actually used them. Maybe it’s like sending a tiny charge through a processor - it fries a few transistors which break everything else once it’s powered up. Or not. Does that even happen?

Still, a UPS would be useful for the reasons you mentioned - I haven’t really seen a problem like this before.

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