Had a week where every single hard drive I touched failed catastrophically

Last Tuesday I got three clients in a row with dead drives, one was a 2TB Seagate that clicked like a broken metronome, the other two were old Western Digitals that wouldn't even spin up. By Friday I had a stack of 5 failed drives on my workbench and started wondering if I was cursed or just bad at my job. Has anyone else had a run of bad luck like that where you question if you should even be in this field?

2 comments

2 Comments

david8211mo ago

Three weeks ago I had my refrigerator ice maker stop working, then my car battery died, and then my garage door opener broke all in the span of four days. It felt like the universe was just piling on for no reason. I think when stuff breaks, it's like dominoes - one thing goes and you start noticing everything else that's been on the edge. Hard drives especially, they're like lightbulbs that all seem to blow at once after you buy a pack. Maybe it's just a reminder that nothing we buy lasts as long as it used to. You're probably not cursed, just dealing with the same garbage quality that's creeping into everything now.

caseyw121mo ago

Honestly, that "cursed or just bad at my job" part hit me hard. I remember one semester where every single laptop in my classroom's cart decided to die in the same week. I had a stack of five Dell Latitudes that would blue screen if you breathed on them wrong. One kid's hard drive literally made a grinding noise like an old coffee grinder before just giving up. I spent my whole weekend pulling drives and testing them in my home PC, only to realize three of them had the exact same failed head assembly. Made me wonder if I'd accidentally bought a batch of refurbished junk from a bad seller or something.