Post Your Biggest Storage Mistakes

[jpishgar]

Once upon a time, I accidentally formatted an entire partition containing work files from a Seagate hard drive as a result of changing the jumper settings WHILE using PartitionMagic. I wasn't aware that the program was running at the time, as the monitor had been turned off by the previous tech. To say the result was upsetting would be an understatement.

Now that you have my embarrassing confession, let's hear yours.

We want to know what your biggest mistake building PCs has been as it relates to Storage. What mishaps have you had that make you look back and go "Oh man, what the heck was I thinking?".

Consider this a no judgement zone - and a fun means of tech-related therapy.

Include images, if you've got 'em. If we get some good horror stories, we might even turn this into an editorial feature and showcase our communal misery.

-JP

p.s. Check out the other threads, too.
• Post Your Biggest CPUs Mistakes
• Post Your Biggest Graphics Card Mistakes
• Post Your Biggest Motherboard Mistakes
• Post your Biggest Storage Mistakes
• Post your Biggest Cooling, Cases, & PSUs Mistakes

 

[sam1275tom]

When in middle school, I tryed to make a transparent HDD by replace the cover by some tapes... I knew HDD are sensitive to dust and I tried my best, but still fails...

 

[jpishgar]

Like the bay covers, or the actual hard drive casing itself?

 

[legonate416]

I accidentally formatted my data drive, and the only backup I had done was an old online one... Eeks.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

I was migrating a box of ancient 1.44MB floppies, and I picked up the drive and moved it while it was running.
Yep, it killed all the files on the floppy.

 

[ChaoticWolf]

I always had the habit of drinking and using my laptop, must've spilt some drinks on the hard drive area or the laptop itself without me knowing, then one day, Hard Drive broke, blue screen of death, no fan or hard drive sounds, hard drive was toast and laptop mousepad buttons don't work. Darn. gave it to someone to repair, said that there was water damage, Had to get a new hard drive lol

 

[sam1275tom]

Like the bay covers, or the actual hard drive casing itself?

The actual HDD, that why it fails.

 

[yozo67]

Tried to cable manage with power on, disconnected HDD. Corrupted drive. R.I.P. files.

 

[Ryan_78]

I had a spare hard drive and I was cleaning my room and put my magnetic tray for screws on it..... didn't see it till 10 months later.
welp

 

[ThomasWojciechowski]

Had BSOD errors, since system was not booting to Windows took HDD to local tech in order to back up data and guess what...HDD gone forever.

Regards,
Thomas Wojciechowski

 

[SinxarKnights]

Formatting my backup drive while reinstalling Windows. Thankfully it was just a quick format and I was able to recover the majority of the data.

 

[legonate416]

Formatting my backup drive while reinstalling Windows. Thankfully it was just a quick format and I was able to recover the majority of the data.

Quick question, did you do that with a free program?

 

[Nick_50]

Transferring files to sort onto a USB stick then selecting the same USB stick for a windows 10 media creation tool download. Didn't realise it formatted the USB stick so it wiped my files.

 

[SinxarKnights]

Formatting my backup drive while reinstalling Windows. Thankfully it was just a quick format and I was able to recover the majority of the data.

Quick question, did you do that with a free program?

The recovery? Yes, I used Recuva.

 

[legonate416]

Formatting my backup drive while reinstalling Windows. Thankfully it was just a quick format and I was able to recover the majority of the data.

Quick question, did you do that with a free program?

The recovery? Yes, I used Recuva.

Thanks. I'll note it for the future

 

[roberthop1980]

Junior high I was the only one savvy enough to know anything about how our network worked in our new school. (Almost all Mac's) The "IT" guy was our shop teacher, and a prick to boot.

I don't know what possessed me to do it, but one day I was goofing off and not really paying attention to what I was doing. The next day I found out the hard way as I was pulled out of first period and grilled by my parents, the principal, and the "IT" guy. Apparently I had partitioned the network drive into really small partitions (around 1-5 Mb) each. Not just a small portion, THE ENTIRE DRIVE.

To add insult to injury I had put a random password on each partition by randomly button mashing the keyboard. Shop teacher kept asking for PW and didn't believe me when I said I didn't know. Network was down for the next four days and the "IT" guy was replaced by someone who knew how to lock user access.

 

[roberthop1980]

Second answer, because I just thought of it. 😀 Customer brings computer in because it won't boot after taking it to another local repair shop. Gives the boot partition not found error. Open up the case. No HDD. Apparently the other guy had taken it out (for whatever reason) and never put it back in. Sadly, this is not the only instance of something like this I have heard from other customers.

 

[DustinV]

after I built my PC, I had all downloads to automatically go into my 120gb SSD. Ya I ran out of storage in a month.... Had to copy everything over to my 1 TB HDD (except Windows and a few games) and changed default download to HDD. As well as making new shortcuts for every program I had.

 

[brickson98]

I hard booted my PC at the wrong time when it kept running into a blue screen after 5 minutes of operation. I was busy playing an online game on my Xbox 360 at the time, and I planned to fix the blue screen issue (simply needed to uninstall some webcam drivers that didn't cooperate with windows 10) right after I finished that game. So my computer kept blue screening and restarting, and I got sick of it, and felt like it wasn't the best thing for my computer, so I hard booted my computer once it got to the Windows 10 lock screen. Now, when I used Windows 7, hard booting in the lock screen, or after I logged in didn't cause any harm. It was only if you did it while Windows was booting up or shutting down. But Windows 10 didn't like me hard booting while sitting at the lock screen, so when I went to power on my system after I finished playing that game on my 360, what I thought was going to be a simple 2 minute fix to a very small problem, turned into me having to reset my PC because it was stuck booting to a blue screen no matter what kind of repairs and restores I tried to do. Now, when I finally got around to getting my PC up and running again, I remembered I made a back up right before I upgraded to Windows 10, because at the time I didn't know you got to keep all of your data. So what I thought I could do was just copy everything from my backup to my C: drive and be on my way. Well, I came to find out about these great things called registry keys and all the junk that makes programs work and install properly. So none of my programs worked, and I had to spend the extra time resetting my PC again to get all the junk off, and finally start fresh, and just accept that I had to reinstall everything, and could only salvage files from my backup, and not games and programs. I learned a lot from those mistakes, and now when I backup my stuff, I'll do a disk image backup.

 

[ForensicObject446]

Two months back our friends brought over a 3TB Seagate Hard Drive to our place. She said the drive would not work for some reason. But it was in an enclosure so I took the casing out and used a new SATA cable, hooked it up and turned the computer on. Well it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, because the SATA cable began to catch fire. Now the drive is stuffed...

 

[legonate416]

Two months back our friends brought over a 3TB Seagate Hard Drive to our place. She said the drive would not work for some reason. But it was in an enclosure so I took the casing out and used a new SATA cable, hooked it up and turned the computer on. Well it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, because the SATA cable began to catch fire. Now the drive is stuffed...

...

How is that even possible

 

[ForensicObject446]

I think it was the Seagate Hard Drive since some of the 4TB's had some safety hazards, but I never thought it would affect 3TB HDD's of that brand. Same thing happened to the poor guy here over at Gamestop: http://www.gamespot.com/forums/pc-mac-linux-society-1000004/sata-power-cable-to-hdd-caught-fire-28965116/

 

[JenneQ]

Once upon a time, I accidentally formatted an entire partition containing work files from a Seagate hard drive as a result of changing the jumper settings WHILE using PartitionMagic. I wasn't aware that the program was running at the time, as the monitor had been turned off by the previous tech. To say the result was upsetting would be an understatement.

Now that you have my embarrassing confession, let's hear yours.

We want to know what your biggest mistake building PCs has been as it relates to Storage. What mishaps have you had that make you look back and go "Oh man, what the heck was I thinking?".

Consider this a no judgement zone - and a fun means of tech-related therapy.

Include images, if you've got 'em. If we get some good horror stories, we might even turn this into an editorial feature and showcase our communal misery.

-JP

p.s. Check out the other threads, too.
• Post Your Biggest CPUs Mistakes
• Post Your Biggest Graphics Card Mistakes
• Post Your Biggest Motherboard Mistakes
• Post your Biggest Storage Mistakes
• Post your Biggest Cooling, Cases, & PSUs Mistakes

Mine is the biggest. But it happened just once. I stored almost everything on C drive.

 

[Guest]

Not connecting the SATA power for my SSD, and spending 3 days trouble-shooting.

And I still don't think they need any power, I mean, they are so small and simple!

 

[legonate416]

Not connecting the SATA power for my SSD, and spending 3 days trouble-shooting.

And I still don't think they need any power, I mean, they are so small and simple!

All drives need power, the difference is how much