South Korea’s government may have permanently lost 858TB of information after a crucial hard drive was destroyed in a fire at a data center in Daejeon.
As reported by DCD, a battery fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) data center, located in the city of Daejeon, on September 26, has caused havoc for government services in Korea.
Goodbye G-Drive?
Work to restore the data center is ongoing, but officials fear data stored on the government’s G-Drive may be gone for good.
G-Drive, which stands for Government Drive and is not a Google product, was used by government staff to keep documents and other files. Each worker was allocated 30GB of space.
According to a report from The Chosun, the drive was one of 96 systems completely destroyed in the fire, and there is no backup.
“The G-Drive couldn’t have a backup system due to its large capacity,” an unnamed official told The Chosun. “The remaining 95 systems have backup data in online or offline forms.”
While some departmers do not rely on G-Drive, those that do have been badly impacted in the aftermath of the fire.
A source from the Ministry of Personnel Management said: “Employees stored all work materials on the G-Drive and used them as needed, but operations are now practically at a standstill.”
As of Saturday, only 115 of 647 affected networks had been restored, a recovery rate of 17.8 percent. A full recovery is expected to take a month. The government says it will offer alternatives to the most important services.
Four people have been arrested as police investigate whether professional negligence contributed to the fire.
Worker on data center restoration project dies
Meanwhile, a government worker overseeing efforts to restore the data center has died after jumping from a building.
As reported by local media outlet The Dong-A Ilbo, the 56-year-old man was found in cardiac arrest near the central building at the government complex in Sejong City at 10.50am on Friday, October 3. He was taken to hospital, and died shortly afterwards.
The man was a senior officer in the Digital Government Innovation Office and had been overseeing work on the data center network. His mobile phone was found in the smoking area on the 15th floor of the government building.
Korea’s Ministry of the Interior and Safety said he was not involved in the police investigation into the fire, but that the circumstances around his death, including whether overwork was a contributing factor, are being investigated.
DCD sends its condolences to the man’s family, friends, and colleagues.