Sysadmin broke hardware worth more than he made in a month – and lied his way out of the mess

Storage

The alternative was moving back in with his parents

WHO, ME? The world of work is basically broken, which is why The Register uses Monday mornings to remind readers of that foul fact in a new instalment of “Who, Me?” – the reader-contributed column that shares your mistakes and reveals how you recovered from them.This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Hank” who told us his career started in the 1990s with a gig as sysadmin for a small town poultry factory that was an outpost for a larger company.“I was brimming with excitement to work on the latest tech, Novell NetWare 4.1!” he told The Register.

One of the first things Hank was asked to do was a storage upgrade for a pair of servers.

“We bought a pair of very expensive 750MB disks and since I was the sole IT person at the plant, head office sent me the drives and put me in charge of the upgrade.”Hank was excited when the drives arrived, so he unboxed them and spent a little time fondling what was then just about the most capacious and expensive storage device money could buy.“Who would not want to touch 750MB SCSI drives with blazing fast reads courtesy of 10,000 RPM spindles?” he asked. “It was cutting edge!”It was also rather slippery, because after removing one of the drives from its anti-static bag, Hank dropped it.“Panic set it shortly after,” he admitted. “This drive was worth more than I made in a month. I was still new and on probation. Visions of unemployment and having to move back in with my parents danced through my head.”