Simple question for all you technically adroit members...

healthmyths

Platinum Member
Sep 19, 2011
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The IRS has over 106,000 employees.
The IRS said 7 people that were all emailing information as to how to target any anti-Obama groups for either delay or rejecting them.

So here is the question: What are the odds that 7 hard drives of 106,000 people's hard drives all crashed and that all these 7 people's emails were destroyed?

I've been around personal computer hard drives since the biggest hard drive I had was 40 megabytes and I've yet to actually have a hard drive crash.
The odds of my not having a crashed hard drive in over 34 years are astronomically I know, so there are greater chances these 7 IRS employees hard drives crashed. I grant that.
So help me figure out 6/10th of one percent of 106,000 IRS employees could all have crashed drives.

Now here is a technical person's answer:

"I run a data center.
Disk drives that are left running continuously last between two and three years.
Three years is about 36 months.
The odds of a disk failing in any given month are roughly one in 36.
The odds of two different drives failing in the same month are roughly one in 36 squared, or 1 in about 1,300.
The odds of three drives failing in the same month is 36 cubed or 1 in 46,656.
The odds of seven different drives failing in the same month is 37 to the 7th power = 1 in 78,664,164,096."

7 Hard Drives Failing: What are the odds? These are the odds. @ AMERICAN DIGEST

So you technical members do you agree that there is a one chance in 78 billion opportunities just seems a little weird.
 
You only know of 7 that are of interest, there may have been more. That said the chances of the specific hard drives that were requested all crashing is astronomical.
 

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