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From: ccrdave@deneb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.wanted
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <165@ucdavis.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Feb-86 23:01:16 EST
Article-I.D.: ucdavis.165
Posted: Fri Feb  7 23:01:16 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Feb-86 03:42:20 EST
References: <8300001@hplabsb.UUCP> <1716@ittatc.ATC.ITT.UUCP>
Organization: University of California, Davis
Lines: 54

> I was wondering if anyone out there has some horror stories about the
> computer industry; crashed systems or lost backups.
> 

I tried to e-mail this, but was bounced back.

Six good ones, all true.

1)  Somebody was fired from his job for a company in the bay area about
ten years ago.  He planted a software time bomb in the system to screw
up all records for accounts receivable.  When the right code was hit,
all the records went away.  The company didn't maintain backups.  They
couldn't get anybody to pay them money.  They went bankrupt as a result.
(It was in all the papers.)

2)  A company I work with has an NCR Tower (AT to Sun sized micro) which
they did software development on.  Well, the system was on Version 7.
They wanted to upgrade to System V.  They did so, without backing up
their system first.  Crunch, crunch, crunch, the disk formats down.
Whoosh, spanking clean disk, and six months down the drain.  (I wasn't
in the state at the time, you realize, and I was SURE they did backups.)

3)  NCR had a novel design for heads, I think it was about fifteen years
ago.  Ceramic or something like that.  Should have work, but the crash
rate was bad.  Anyway, one company got "lucky" and didn't have a head crash
for two years.  During those two years, they didn't back up ONCE!  Two
years worth of work down the tubes.  (Got this fron an NCR service tech.)

4)  When the local campus computer center got rid of their IBM 7044(?)
back around 1970, they got a Burroughs 6500.  This computer used disk
drives instead of tapes.  Everything was fine, for three months.  Then,
head crash.  Of course, they hadn't done one backup.  I heard this
from a professor who lost three months of work.

5)  I saw an operator munch the absolutely irretrievable data set of
a poor woman from the Chem department.  Two years worth of work, all
shreded by a bad tape operator.

6)  A department did all their backups on ONE tape.  Two years, they
used one tape.  They screwed up, and wiped out the tape by re-initializing
at the wrong density.  Goodbye data sets.  (Small VMS system, using backup.
Backup allows independent save sets.  The tape wasn't filled in two years.)


Please send me a collection of what you get.

			{dual,lll-crg,ucbvax}!ucdavis!vega!ccrdave
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