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Back when I worked tech support for an electronics store in NYC, I got this story from a consultant who bought his parts from us. He had been working as a consultant for a business in South America, and had installed a POS/inventory management/accounting system for them. He had been continuing to consult with them remotely, and at some point they grew large enough to need a new server. Management, however, didn't want to pay to fly him down and install the new server.
So, he bought a computer and upgrades from us, and installed Novell Netware on it. (FYI, at the time when this took place, Novell systems would have to boot off a special floppy disk, and each disk was specialized for that particular hardware configuration; without the disk, the system was useless.) He then packed it up, along with the floppy disk and multiple backups, and explicit instructions on how to back up, shut down and unhook the old server, put the new one in its place, boot it up and overlay it with the backup to get the new system running, and shipped off the whole shebang.
Weeks later, it arrived. The owner himself performed the swap, and did so admirably... Except for one little goof.
The owner was taking the instructions step by step, which told him to remove the floppy disk from its envelope and insert it into the drive. So he took the floppy disk... Removed it from its envelope... Carefully peeled the jacket apart and removed the bare disk... And installed it into the server.
Now comes the fun part. He had managed to not damage the disk while extracting it or inserting it into the drive. He also had a 50/50 chance of getting it right-side-up into the drive, and succeeded there too. So the system booted up properly!
The server ran with the bare disk in the drive for more than half a year, with the company happily using it for all its work - until finally, the dust that settled on the disk, and would normally be cleaned from it by the jacket, caused the media to wear out, at which point the server would no longer boot.
Also at which point no one could find the backup copies of the boot disks. Also at which point they realized they'd been horribly negligent with making backups of the system. The consultant hadn't kept a backup of the boot disk; he'd sent off enough copies and had expected his instructions to keep them safe in separate locations to be followed.
So, the company had to shut down until they could import a tech (not the consultant, they were mad at him) from the US to hack their own server and recreate the server boot structure.
So, he bought a computer and upgrades from us, and installed Novell Netware on it. (FYI, at the time when this took place, Novell systems would have to boot off a special floppy disk, and each disk was specialized for that particular hardware configuration; without the disk, the system was useless.) He then packed it up, along with the floppy disk and multiple backups, and explicit instructions on how to back up, shut down and unhook the old server, put the new one in its place, boot it up and overlay it with the backup to get the new system running, and shipped off the whole shebang.
Weeks later, it arrived. The owner himself performed the swap, and did so admirably... Except for one little goof.
The owner was taking the instructions step by step, which told him to remove the floppy disk from its envelope and insert it into the drive. So he took the floppy disk... Removed it from its envelope... Carefully peeled the jacket apart and removed the bare disk... And installed it into the server.
Now comes the fun part. He had managed to not damage the disk while extracting it or inserting it into the drive. He also had a 50/50 chance of getting it right-side-up into the drive, and succeeded there too. So the system booted up properly!
The server ran with the bare disk in the drive for more than half a year, with the company happily using it for all its work - until finally, the dust that settled on the disk, and would normally be cleaned from it by the jacket, caused the media to wear out, at which point the server would no longer boot.
Also at which point no one could find the backup copies of the boot disks. Also at which point they realized they'd been horribly negligent with making backups of the system. The consultant hadn't kept a backup of the boot disk; he'd sent off enough copies and had expected his instructions to keep them safe in separate locations to be followed.
So, the company had to shut down until they could import a tech (not the consultant, they were mad at him) from the US to hack their own server and recreate the server boot structure.