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Admin brought his drill to work and destroyed a datacenter (www.theregister.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Who, Me?: Some people will do anything to avoid an all-nighter

(this fits here right?)

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Slim learned that the lazy admin knew about the too-small screw holes on the rented racks but left it too late to hire someone with the skills and equipment to rightsize them.

The lazy admin decided to do the job himself, but didn’t fancy doing it overnight as is sensible for this sort of dangerous job.

“He brought his own drill from home, threw a bedsheet over the top server so metal flecks from drilling won't go into it, and started drilling these rack holes during trading hours,” Slim told Who, Me?

To make matters worse – if that’s possible – the lazy admin set his drill into Concrete Mode, which in this column’s experience usually means the machine both spins the bit at furious speed and pumps it back and forth in a percussive hammering motion.

The result?

“EVERY. SINGLE. HARD DRIVE. DEAD,”

Wait so what happened? It doesn't sound like he was drilling directly into the hard drives. Is the vibration from drilling a hole in nearby metal really going to reliably destroy all of them?

[–] WolfLink 1 points 4 days ago

HDDs consist of a metal disk spinning very fast with a magnetic needle held very close to it. Enough of a bump and the needle can run into the disk, potentially destroying both needle and disk in the process.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

Hard disks, and not SSDs? Hell yeah. They're spinning metal/magnetic platters. Vibrations can throw them off balance and totally fuck up the platter.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Sounds like this was no standard drill... If someone took an impact hammer to a rack with spinning drive I'd imagine there would be few survivors

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Many standard drills these days have a hammer drill mode that gives some rotohammer-like action when you push in while drilling. It's easy to leave this mode on if you're only ever driving screws, as you're unlikely to push hard enough to engage the mechanism. If you're an idiot.