Admin brought his drill to work, destroyed disks and crashed a datacenter

HELLFIRE

CAUTION : I’m getting 6th hand heart palpitations just from reading this story… but very relevant in nearly any circumstance…

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/02/who_me/

… “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,” Slim all-CAPSed in his mail to Who, Me? …

The comments on this have a link to this youtube video that shows just HOW sensitive to vibration an HDD can be… very telling…

…scuse me, going to get a bottle of beta-blockers and a bottle of calcium-blockers… 😱 😱 😱 😱

Regards

egeezer

HELLFIRE
That real time performance tracking is great. We had a similar tool for earlier AS/400. I had to be very careful when setting parameters for PEX since it ran at system level priority. It appears the utilities have gotten much more efficient and easier to use.

If I were starting over in IT, the IBM midrange I Series would be my choice for system platforms.

px_eliezer_

HELLFIRE I’m getting 6th hand heart palpitations just from reading this story… but very relevant in nearly any circumstance…

When I saw the headline, I assumed that it was some guy who was fired, who deliberately wanted to take revenge and destroy the company.

Did not realize it was just a plain idiot.

OmegaWolf747

HELLFIRE Does that mean that it’s better to keep quiet around our PCs, or does this only apply to servers?

g121

egeezer If I were starting over in IT, the IBM midrange I Series would be my choice for system platforms.

Of the mainframes/mini’s/pc’s I used during my work career, the AS/400 had, hands down, the best, most informative error messaging & help facilities.

Thane_Bitter

Janet Jackson’s song Rhythm Nation would apparently damage laptops hard drives: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994

In the OP’s story the moron used a hammer drill, this tool aside from rotating the shaft of a drill bit it also causes the shaft to move in and out which is very useful when using a masonry bit on concrete and related materials allowing a person to drill a hole much faster and more accurately than with a standard drill. The guy was literally hammering the drives as they spun. Not sure how many impacts per second the drill would make, its a function of the rotation speed and the design of the mechanism inside the drill but certainly any amount was fault for the drives. As always there is a right tool for the job, and tools (including human ones) which aren’t suitable for the job.

Heat84

So they were actual heads & platters hard drives? Not SSD’s? I think most people(Most non-computer geeks at least) use hard drive as a general term for a computer data storage device.

Somewhat-Reticent

Heat84 Article didn’t clarify - showed rack of hot-swap bay doors.

Heat84

Somewhat-Reticent Article didn’t clarify - showed rack of hot-swap bay doors

Maybe the guy thought they were so he thought he had nothing to worry about. Aren’t there very few hard drives still in use with servers and they’re mostly using SSD’s? If only for the storage capacity.

I was thinking maybe they were SSD’s and the source of the vibrations was so close to them that it found a way to damage them.

Somewhat-Reticent

OmegaWolf747 It means get rid of lazy fools before damage.

codezer0

OmegaWolf747 Why should we keep quiet around servers? They cost absurd amounts of money and then use fans that read a LOL on the power required and spin at “Fuck OSHA” rpms. If anything, they deserve the verbal abuse 😁

Somewhat-Reticent

Heat84 Maybe the guy thought

Unlikely.