{"id":535,"date":"2025-10-06T18:28:39","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T16:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.familie-kleinman.nl\/brain\/?p=535"},"modified":"2025-10-06T19:34:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T17:34:13","slug":"south-korea-invented-the-ssd-then-forgot-to-use-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.familie-kleinman.nl\/brain\/index.php\/2025\/10\/06\/south-korea-invented-the-ssd-then-forgot-to-use-one\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea Invented the SSD. Then Forgot to Use One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the South Korean Ministry of Digital Amnesia<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

South Korea just managed to lose 858 terabytes of government data in a fire.Source: https:\/\/tweakers.net\/nieuws\/239988\/zuid-korea-verliest-overheidsdata-door-brand-en-ontbreken-van-back-up.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Not in a remote village with barely any internet.<\/p>\n

Not in a developing nation hidden somewhere on the map.<\/p>\n

No \u2014 in South Korea.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, you read that correctly. South Korea.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not North Korea<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

SOUTH Korea.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Land of gigabit internet, Samsung SSDs, KIA cars, and AI-powered toilet seats.<\/p>\n

The cause?<\/h2>\n

Turns out \u2018the cloud\u2019 was just one very flammable room<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No backup.<\/p>\n

Let me say that again.<\/p>\n

NO BACKUP.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let that sink in.<\/p>\n

Yes I actually wrote that..<\/p>\n

– N O – F R I C K I N G – B A C K U P –<\/strong><\/p>\n

The government\u2019s internal “G-Drive” \u2014 not Google, but their own cloud \u2014 went up in smoke, literally…..<\/p>\n

And why? Because, according to a government source, its capacity was deemed too large to back up.<\/p>\n

191,000 civil servants lost their data. That\u2019s 191,000 people who spent years producing work that now only exists on the event horizon of a black hole.<\/p>\n

Someone probably saved a few euros on storage budgets. Let\u2019s be generous and call it \u20ac50,000 per year in \u201ccost savings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheap, right?<\/p>\n

Except that same decision just flushed billions in lost work hours down the drain.<\/p>\n

The math nobody did<\/h2>\n

Here’s MURPHY!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

191,000 employees x \u20ac50,000 (yes probably too low) per year = \u20ac9.55 billion in salaries.<\/p>\n

Assume just 10% of their work is unrecoverable \u2192 roughly \u20ac1 billion lost. And it\u2019s probably more \u2014 not even counting the wasted time digging through old local copies that turn out to be outdated versions.<\/p>\n

A full redundant backup system? Let\u2019s say \u20ac30,000. Forty-eight 20-TB drives, an enclosure, and another rack in another building.<\/p>\n

Or, if you\u2019re feeling fancy, a full LTO-9 tape library: \u20ac50,000.<\/p>\n

Or even more fancy! Do it both! Because the data *might* just be important.<\/p>\n

Congratulations \u2014 you saved the price of a company car and lost an economy.<\/p>\n

How?<\/h2>\n

Assumptions are the mother of all fuckups, and boy this was a fuckup++<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because someone, somewhere, thought:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • \u201cThe data center already has fire suppression, right?\u201d<\/li>\n
  • Because off-site replication is expensive.<\/li>\n
  • Because we\u2019ll implement that next fiscal year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Because nobody wants to be the person who approves a line item that doesn\u2019t sparkle on a PowerPoint slide.<\/p>\n

    And oh… sparks did fly in that burning data centre.<\/p>\n

    Ohh, the irony<\/h2>\n

    Maybe the NSA still has a copy \u2014 they usually do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    South Korea literally manufactures NAND flash memory.<\/p>\n

    They build the chips and drives that Western companies use to actually store backups on!<\/p>\n

    And yet their own government couldn\u2019t be bothered to keep a copy of its own bytes.<\/p>\n

    You honestly can\u2019t make this shit up.<\/p>\n

    Moral of the story<\/h2>\n

    Hope is not a backup strategy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Don’t be like South Korea.. Create backups ( yes plural! )<\/p>\n

    And if your “cloud” only exists in one building \u2014 it\u2019s not a cloud it is an accident waiting to happen.<\/p>\n

    Last words<\/h2>\n

    Murphy’s law in full effect<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    What I don\u2019t get is that there was nobody in that office who asked themselves:<\/p>\n

    \u201cWhat would it cost if Murphy comes along?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Because we all know Murphy.<\/p>\n

    If it can happen \u2014 it will happen.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    And here\u2019s the part I really don\u2019t understand:<\/p>\n

    Years ago, I worked at a client. One day, we actually saw a ransomware attack unfold in real time \u2014 files changing, folders being encrypted, everything.<\/p>\n

    Of course, that attack should never have happened in the first place.<\/p>\n

    That was a lesson learned.<\/p>\n

    But what followed was exactly how you handle a crisis:<\/p>\n

    one phone call later, the right team pulled the shared drive offline. Within hours, everything was back to normal. Data restored. Cause identified. Mitigations in place.<\/p>\n

    Business as usual.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Because that\u2019s what proper incident response looks like. You see the fire, you pull the plug, you restore from backup.<\/p>\n

    Not \u201cwe\u2019ll back up later.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Not \u201ctoo big to copy.\u201d<\/p>\n

    That\u2019s the difference between losing a few hours and losing a country\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n

    Brain out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Welcome to the South Korean Ministry of Digital Amnesia South Korea just managed to lose 858 terabytes of government data in a fire.Source: https:\/\/tweakers.net\/nieuws\/239988\/zuid-korea-verliest-overheidsdata-door-brand-en-ontbreken-van-back-up.html Not in a remote village with barely any internet. Not in a developing nation hidden somewhere on the map. No \u2014 in South Korea. Yes, you read that correctly. South Korea….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[323,322,321,51,320],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant","tag-fire","tag-murphy","tag-no-backup","tag-rant","tag-samsung"],"yoast_head":"\nSouth Korea Invented the SSD. 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