Data Disaster...

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

...or how to really shag up several thousand pictures of your grandchildren that you can never replace."

Not wanting to threadjack this thread which dredged up another repressed memory (why do I keep reading the tech support stories) I'm posting this one here on it's own thread.

Customer comes in with a computer that thanks to it being plugged in an unprotected outlet during a thunderstorm, had all the magic smoke let out of it. The computer is toast and there is no real way to repair it save for rebuilding it and replacing every part that is now a charcoal briquette.

The customer tells me that they have already replaced the computer with a new one but wants us to try and recover all the pictures that are on it. That there are the aforementioned bazillion pictures of her half dozen grand children.

I take the computer to my tech bench and I pull the drive and hook it to my USB-to-Hard Drive gizmo and see if the drive itself is working. Sure enough the drive is one of the few things that hasn't gone tits up and I can recover data from it.

We agree on the service (back up pictures onto a DVD, confirming that her new PC has a DVD drive) and a price for my time and labor. It wasn't all that much. Just an hour's labor. Didn't even charge for the 25 cent blank DVD.

So I go and find all her pictures (thankfully all in the My Pictures folder) and burn them to a DVD. I call her to pick up the disk and the remains of her computer (as it costs us money to dispose of that crap). She comes in and I show her the disk having all the pictures by loading it into our demo PC, she pays and heads out.

The next day I look down the business end of a double-barreled shit storm. The woman comes in screaming bloody blue murder that there are no pictures on the disk. Before I can get a word in edgewise she flings the disk at my head (I ducked) and it smashes against the metal door frame behind me.

Broke it into several pieces that were shedding the metallic film that has all the data on it. In short, the disk is ruined.

My boss, hearing the commotion, comes out just in time to see me ducking the flying DVD and tries to find out what's going on. He sends me into the back where I stay hidden but listen in.

Turns out that when she put the disk into the drive, nothing came up. Boss comes back to me and asks if I verified that disk had the pictures on it. I told him that I showed her on the Demo PC before she paid me a penny.

He goes back to the customer and points that out and gets her to calm down. He tells her to bring in the new PC and the old hard drive and that we would transfer the pictures to the new PC directly for free. Satisfied, the customer leaves.

I'm not too happy about this since 1. the data was on the DVD that the woman smashed and 2. I really didn't want to help this woman after she threw the disk at my head. But needs must as the devil drives and so I get ready for another data transfer.

Woman brings in the new PC and the hard drive. However the hard drive looks to be in worse shape than it was when I gave it back to her. There are several dings, dents, scrapes...It looks rather like it had been dropped several times in fact. I point this out to the boss and he goes to ask the customer while I try to see why the PC didn't want to load the disk.

Loose data cable. It had edged out slightly in transit and wasn't seeing the data properly. I re-seated the cable and it started reading CD's and DVD's with no problems. That mystery solved, I then powered up the hard drive with the external USB gizmo.

<kathunk><kathunk><kathunk> I thought to myself "Self, this is not good"

I call over my boss and point this out. Boss explains that the customer gave the drive to a grandchild who was amusing himself by tossing the hard drive into the air as hard and as high as he could and allowing it to slam into the tarmac road.

Great. DVD is in pieces, Hard Drive is totaled, and the only option left (if it would work at all) is to pay the several grand for data recovery at one of those places that has a clean room and can remove and mount the platters in special machinery.

Boss tells me to package everything up and to sneak out the back door and get some lunch. He grabs everything and heads out to the customer. As I am leaving I start hearing screams.

Boss never told me what happened next. But as I never saw the woman again I didn't really care.

[Polenicus]

See kids? Just by knowing your rights, being assertive, not taking 'no' for an answer, and remembering that the customer is always right, you can easily take a simple problem and spin it into a massive undertaking that will create jobs and stimulate the economy! Why, that saint of a woman is going to put someone's kid through college! Just not her own.

[sirwired]

Wow... that is about 500% fail there. I will say that if I was the manager, I would have tossed her out of the store and perma-banned her the second she threw the DVD at you. That's assault, and there is no place for it, even if you DID screw up, which you did not.

[Comechatcha]

I'm glad he didn't have you tell her the bad news. She probably would have chucked the drive at you next.

Serves her right if she never gets her precious pictures.

[xaenon]

Ugh, customer failure on so many levels it should be painful. FATALLY painful.

I mean, I can understand the woman would be upset. But that 'throw things' tantrum - no, that's never acceptable. I don't give a damn if they have millions of dollars worth of financial records on the disc. If she can't be civil, then the stupid bitch deserves the misery she's brought on herself. Had she calmly explained the problem instead of being an idiot, things might have (and probably WOULD have) turned out well. Sometimes there really IS justice, y'know?

As for giving the old hard drive to a child - on what planet do delicate electromechanical data-storage devices constitute a 'toy'? Obviously it was in some semblance of working condition - WHY oh WHY would you give it to a youngster and say "here, junior, destroy this, will you?" - ESPECIALLY knowing that it contains the ONLY OTHER KNOWN ARCHIVE OF YOUR PRICELESS PHOTOS? CDs and DVDs can get lost or damaged (obviously), and there is some question as to whether or not they're as 'permanent' as is commonly thought, even if properly cared for.

The seemingly-willful ignorance of some people just astounds me. They f***king WALLOW in it. Seriously, I think sometimes there's a contest going on somewhere to see who can be the biggest idiot. I wonder what the grand prize would be in a contest like that? An all-expenses-paid one-way trip to Neptune?

[tropicsgoddess]

That is just epic colossal fail to not plug in a computer in a surge protector to get fried and let their kid play with the computer's new hard drive like it's a toy! I hope that bitch got perma-banned!

[Polenicus]

That is just epic colossal fail to not plug in a computer in a surge protector to get fried and let their kid play with the computer's new hard drive like it's a toy! I hope that bitch got perma-banned!

The surge protector thing I can forgive, it's a common mistake. And since not all surge protectors are equal, she STILL might have gotten fried.

Everything after that, though, is just staggering.

[vang]

Aside from the bad idea of trashing the drive that's your only backup... a normal hard drive, hard solid metal casing, decently weighty, nice and small with hard metal corners.. That is *not* high on my list of things to give your grandchild to throw high up into the air. Seriously, that's serious pain waiting to happen.

[Hyndis]

I would have calmly, politely pointed out that the only remaining copy of the data was on the disc that was thrown and shattered, and that as she had destroyed the last remaining copy of the data, unfortunately the data can no longer be recovered, but you are welcome to try to contact a data recovery company with a cleanroom and there is a chance they might be able to recover something from that.

But then I'm a bastard. Kill them with politeness while at the same time try not to sound like I'm enjoying it too much.

There's even a wiki on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

That is just epic colossal fail to not plug in a computer in a surge protector to get fried and let their kid play with the computer's new hard drive like it's a toy! I hope that bitch got perma-banned!

Actually it was the hard drive from the old, lightning nuked computer. The only thing wrong with the new computer was a loose cable.

The surge protector thing I can forgive, it's a common mistake. And since not all surge protectors are equal, she STILL might have gotten fried.

Everything after that, though, is just staggering.

It also depends on how hard the facility was hit. I had to replace carpeting from where an APC branded UPS (not just a surge, but a full Battery Backup) cracked under the strain of the lightning surge and spilled battery acid.

And there is the fact that a power surge suppressor is only good for so many surges before it loses potency. Even after a couple of years of air conditioners, refrigerator compressors, and the micro surges of all of the rest of the stuff in the average household...they are going to wear out.

If you're on a Surge Strip, the suggested replacement schedule is two years or after a major thunderstorm that causes anything else in your house to fail.

[EricKei]

she threw the DVD at you. That's assault, and there is no place for it, even if you DID screw up, which you did not.

IANAL, of course...but I do believe that's (attempted) Aggravated Battery. Assault is making a threat; Battery is doing it. Aggravated because she used an object (nee "weapon") as part of the attack.

That is *not* high on my list of things to give your grandchild to throw high up into the air. Seriously, that's serious pain waiting to happen.

In more ways than one...What if the kid managed to actually toss it *straight* up and then failed his dodge check?... She probably would have blamed you guys for his injuries, if so.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

The idiocy...it hurts...make it stop...

I swear if I ever run a business or I'm the manager if someone starts throwing things or smashing stuff I'm pressing charges. There will be security cameras aplenty to back me up. I'm sure the customers I deal with now are probably throwing things too, but since I'm talking to them on the phone it doesn't hurt me personally

[Mytical]

@EricKei Probably? You give humanity more credit then I. This 'customer' (I use the term loosely) is so much fail..that the fail whale is envious.

[Geek King]

And there is the fact that a power surge suppressor is only good for so many surges before it loses potency. Even after a couple of years of air conditioners, refrigerator compressors, and the micro surges of all of the rest of the stuff in the average household...they are going to wear out.

If you're on a Surge Strip, the suggested replacement schedule is two years or after a major thunderstorm that causes anything else in your house to fail.

I'll add that even the best surge suppression can be overcome by a direct strike, or near to it. I've seen the results of two such. On one, the circuit tripped, but the surge was still strong enough to have jumped the physical disconnection, or else got in before it disconnected, but there was some definite arcing at some point. On the other, a direct hit on the building itself, the surge came fast enough to wield the fuse (and most of the surge protector, really) in place.

Aside to Mongo: Broke open the UPS batteries? Wowsers. What'd you use to clean up the battery acid? Or did they just pull up the carpet and pitch it?

[Ironclad Alibi]

My computer was zapped by lightning once, and the surge protector wasn't affected. The surge came in through the phone line. The surge took out a telephone and the internal modem card, but nothing else on the computer. After that, I got a surge protector for the phone line too.