#Production Systems

My first in-prod corrupted hard drive problem

A Swiss biopharma company's critical SQL Server experienced hard drive corruption that disabled backup functionality and threatened data loss from laboratory instruments, with investigation revealing that a heavy I/O database patch exposed pre-existing disk degradation rather than causing it directly. The incident highlights the importance of proactive disk health monitoring, redundancy planning for mission-critical systems with zero-downtime requirements, and vendor support limitations even under warranty. For IT organizations, this underscores the need for comprehensive storage resilience strategies, including regular health checks, proper backup validation, and architectural improvements to prevent data loss when primary systems fail.