Ah, the great flood of '76. Thousands of records were lost. Very convenient, that flood.
Genuine question - can you post some more information?
Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
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Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#12The records were not wiped out by a computer crash. They were wiped out by gross incompetence.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#13If you're going to say something about paper, see also the 1973 Personnel Records Archive Fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Personnel_Records_Cen...
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#14[deleted]
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#15The joys of IT. Back in the day, to wipe years of records you had to burn or shred tons of paper in multiple locations. Now you just crash one little system... Despite 20 years of Microsoft-induced crashes, clear best practices and yadda yadda, most organizations will still have a single backup system for any given data repository -- if they have one at all. And the answer when shit happens is "outsource! Go to the c…
It never ceases to amaze me how many teams have the idea that DR is simply buy some new hardware. sadly its not just a government failing.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#16The joys of IT. Back in the day, to wipe years of records you had to burn or shred tons of paper in multiple locations. Now you just crash one little system... Despite 20 years of Microsoft-induced crashes, clear best practices and yadda yadda, most organizations will still have a single backup system for any given data repository -- if they have one at all. And the answer when shit happens is "outsource! Go to the c…
> The joys of IT. Back in the day, to wipe years of records you had to burn or shred tons of paper in multiple locations. Now you just crash one little system. [...] most organizations will still have a single backup system for any given data repository -- if they have one at all.
No, back in the day, you could still wipe years of records because most people only used a single filing cabinet with no duplication or off-site copies. "Destroyed in a fire" was the canonical way to destroy all records, easily. This story has nothing to do with the introduction of IT. Incompetence is still incompetence.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#17Really? Like there are no backups? Is this amateur hour?
This is a Lockheed snafu, so yes, it is amateur hour. Much of the data is backed up, and more of it will be retrievable from original sources. Maybe not all of it; I'll be very interested to see what gaps remain when they declare the issue resolved.
Lockheed is one of those companies that fires senior people to save money. Imagine how this plays out with turbine blades.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#18The joys of IT. Back in the day, to wipe years of records you had to burn or shred tons of paper in multiple locations. Now you just crash one little system... Despite 20 years of Microsoft-induced crashes, clear best practices and yadda yadda, most organizations will still have a single backup system for any given data repository -- if they have one at all. And the answer when shit happens is "outsource! Go to the c…
I would consider it progress.
The only data loss to Google that I was able to find was [0], where a single datacenter was hit by lightning 4 times in short succession, and 0.000001% of disk space in said datacenter was lost. And only because the lost data consisted of recent writes that had yet to be backed up. And only because the lightning affected the AUX power systems in a way that they have since committed to fixing (or perhaps have fixed).
IMO, cloud storage is the most reliable way to store data, and Google the most reliable. I never know if I'm going to drop my laptop and lose all work. Or if the harddrive in my server is going to give up and burst into flames. But the great thing about cloud storage is that it abstracts away hardware components and failures so it's somebody else's problem. And they worry a lot more about data loss than I do. Cloud data storage is designed with the assumption that hardware is faulty. Spread redundant copies of data to geographically isolated datacenters, and you're much safer than some admin of averagejoe.com keeping his data on a single harddrive in his closet.
[0] - https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/15056#57195...
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#19Yeah this is believable.
Where I worked, in the secured network there were maybe 15 workstations with a maximum of maybe 5 people working at any one time, unless there was a "TOUR" going on.
We had 2 contractor and 1 government IT person supporting this network.
I asked the one of the contractor ITs when was the last backup. Response: "Do you want me to do a backup of your workstation tonight?"
WTF!!! I am no IT slob but the minimum is Mon-Thur backup of new and changed files that day, and Friday night was full network backup.
Why wasn't this done?!!!! The tape backup makes too much noise. I guess the bitch couldn't read her endless Romance Novels because of the noise.
I find an intern, not a full employee, working on a design file in the account of another engineer. WTF!!! We believe that since the intern was leaving soon, it would appear that the design was the work of the engineer.
Security violation!!!!! The contractor IT people swore they did not know this was going on...... BS!!! With so few on the network at any one time, and in the mornings only the intern was on the network, these contractor IT people were unaware!!!!
The government IT person knew, but she did not want to report it because she was well aware of the contractor's history of retaliation.
BTW..... during the investigation, the government engineer asked where was it written that they could not share passwords!!!!! Can you hear Snowden laughing at this.
All swept under the lumpy rug....... the violations would make the organization look bad.
As for me..... I got the IR treatment.... that's Isolation and Retaliation... then after 2 and a half days, supervisor sent me an email as to my where abouts.... my reply: Retired as of 4:00 PM PST, 3 days previous.
Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records
#20The joys of IT. Back in the day, to wipe years of records you had to burn or shred tons of paper in multiple locations. Now you just crash one little system... Despite 20 years of Microsoft-induced crashes, clear best practices and yadda yadda, most organizations will still have a single backup system for any given data repository -- if they have one at all. And the answer when shit happens is "outsource! Go to the c…
> The joys of IT. Back in the day, to wipe years of records you had to burn or shred tons of paper in multiple locations. Now you just crash one little system. [...] most organizations will still have a single backup system for any given data repository -- if they have one at all. No, back in the day, you could still wipe years of records because most people only used a single filing cabinet with no duplication or of…
Fire? Why be so bombastic. All it takes is one mis-applied label to permanently destroy records in a large enough filing system.