penk

Warning - this is pretty geeky imagery (I should just stop saying that, ya'll are gonna expect it anyway.)

We have these RAIDking disk arrays at the office. One of them decided to act up today, and took 2 drives at once offline. In disk storage systems, this is a bad idea, it can (and did) cause the entire 200+ gigabyte volume to just 'go away'.

Part of getting this thing running was using a little key to one at a time turn on each individual drive. When the system powers up with these drives offline, there's a little glowing red LED on the drive casing for each drive, with the keyhole next to it. Part of resetting is one by one, putting hte key in, turning it, watching the green light go on, and a few seconds later, the red one go out. Pull the key out, and go to the next drive. As each is done, there's a message on the console saying that each drive has just come alive, and is available.

I did this perhaps 5 times while doing the repairs, and each time I was reminded of the sequence in which David Bowman, using a small key, disables memory modules one by one in HAL. I was even in the computer room, so there was this loud white noise in the background.

"Dave. I feel my mind going, Dave...."