I'm sure they had dozens of process heavy cybersecurity committees producing hundreds if not thousands of powerpoints and word documents outlining procedures and best practices over the last decade.
There is this weird divide between the certified class of non-technical consultants and actual overworked and pushed to corner cut techs.
Funny, because the same thing happened in Nepal a few weeks ago. Protestors/rioters burned some government buildings, along with the tech infrastructure within them, so now almost all electronic data is gone.
Saw a few days ago that the application site for the GKS, the most important scholarship for international students in Korea, went offline for multiple days, surprising to hear that they really lost all of the data though. Great opportunity to build a better website now?
But yeah it's a big problem in Korea right now, lots of important information just vanished, many are talking about it.
Mindblowing. Took a walk. All I can say is that if business continues "as usual" and the economy and public services continue largely unaffected then either there were local copies of critical documents, or you can fire a lot of those workers; either one of those ways the "stress test" was a success.
> The Interior Ministry explained that while most systems at the Daejeon data center are backed up daily to separate equipment within the same center and to a physically remote backup facility, the G-Drive’s structure did not allow for external backups.
This is why I don't really want to run my own cloud :)
Actually testing the backups is boring.
That said, ones the flames are out, they might actually be able to recover some of it.
> However, due to the system’s large-capacity, low-performance storage structure, no external backups were maintained — meaning all data has been permanently lost.
Yikes. You'd think they would at least have one redundant copy of it all.
> erasing work files saved individually by some 750,000 civil servants
> 30 gigabytes of storage per person
That's 22,500 terabytes, about 50 Backblaze storage pods.
It's even worse. According to other articles [1], the total data of "G drive" was 858 TB.
It's almost farcical to calculate, but AWS S3 has pricing of about $0.023/GB/month, which means the South Korean government could have reliable multi-storage backup of the whole data at about $20k/month. Or about $900/month if they opted for "Glacier deep archive" tier ($0.00099/GB/month).
They did have backup of the data ... in the same server room that burned down [2].
TL;DR: Estonia operates a Tier 4 (highest security) data center in Luxembourg with diplomatic immunity. Can actively run critical government services in real-time, not just backups.
Does G-Drive mean Google Drive, or "the drive you see as G:"?
If this is Google Drive, what they had locally were just pointers (for native Google Drive docs), or synchronized documents.
If this means the letter a network disk storage system was mapped to, this is a weird way of presenting the problem (I am typing on the black keyboard and the wooden table, so that you know)
That may not be a perfect answer. One issue with fire suppression systems and spinning rust drives is that the pressure change etc. from the system can also ‘suppress’ the glass platters in drives as well.
They might be singing this song now. (To the tune of 'Yesterday' from the Beatles).
Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly,
There’s not half the files there used to be,
And there’s a deadline
hanging over me.
The system crashed so suddenly.
I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.
Now my data’s gone
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.
Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
Thought all my data was here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.
I'm sure they had dozens of process heavy cybersecurity committees producing hundreds if not thousands of powerpoints and word documents outlining procedures and best practices over the last decade.
There is this weird divide between the certified class of non-technical consultants and actual overworked and pushed to corner cut techs.
The data seems secure. No cyberthreat actors can access it now. Effective access control: check.
Ironically many of those documents for procedures probably lived on that drive...
You jest, but I once had a client who's IaC provisioning code was - you guessed it - stored on the very infrastructure which got destroyed.
I dont know why but cant stop laughing. And the great thing is that they will get paid again to write the same thing.
Funny, because the same thing happened in Nepal a few weeks ago. Protestors/rioters burned some government buildings, along with the tech infrastructure within them, so now almost all electronic data is gone.
https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/113524310004145896
Copy/paste:
7 things all kids need to hear
1 I love you
2 I'm proud of you
3 I'm sorry
4 I forgive you
5 I'm listening
6 RAID is not backup. Make offsite backups. Verify backup. Find out restore time. Otherwise, you got what we call Schrödinger backup
7 You've got what it takes
Brilliant.
This deserves its own HN submission. I submitted it but it was flagged due to the title.
Thank you for sharing it on HN.
Saw a few days ago that the application site for the GKS, the most important scholarship for international students in Korea, went offline for multiple days, surprising to hear that they really lost all of the data though. Great opportunity to build a better website now?
But yeah it's a big problem in Korea right now, lots of important information just vanished, many are talking about it.
Must have been a program without much trickle down into gov tech
Technically the data is still in the cloud
I've been putting off a cloud to cloud migration, but apparently it can be done in hours?
You can use accelerants to speed up migration
The egress cost is gonna be a doozie though!
one of many fires to fight in such a fast scenario
Unfortunately, the algorithm to unhash it is written in smoke signals
Lossy upload though
No information is lost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hiding_theorem#:~:text=info...
Lossy download, no?
Cloud of smoke, amirite.
The cloud has materialized
Mindblowing. Took a walk. All I can say is that if business continues "as usual" and the economy and public services continue largely unaffected then either there were local copies of critical documents, or you can fire a lot of those workers; either one of those ways the "stress test" was a success.
“Final reports and official records submitted to the government are also stored in OnNara, so this is not a total loss”.
> The Interior Ministry explained that while most systems at the Daejeon data center are backed up daily to separate equipment within the same center and to a physically remote backup facility, the G-Drive’s structure did not allow for external backups.
This is why I don't really want to run my own cloud :)
Actually testing the backups is boring.
That said, ones the flames are out, they might actually be able to recover some of it.
> However, due to the system’s large-capacity, low-performance storage structure, no external backups were maintained — meaning all data has been permanently lost.
Yikes. You'd think they would at least have one redundant copy of it all.
> erasing work files saved individually by some 750,000 civil servants
> 30 gigabytes of storage per person
That's 22,500 terabytes, about 50 Backblaze storage pods.
Or even just mirrored locally.
It's even worse. According to other articles [1], the total data of "G drive" was 858 TB.
It's almost farcical to calculate, but AWS S3 has pricing of about $0.023/GB/month, which means the South Korean government could have reliable multi-storage backup of the whole data at about $20k/month. Or about $900/month if they opted for "Glacier deep archive" tier ($0.00099/GB/month).
They did have backup of the data ... in the same server room that burned down [2].
[1] https://www.hankyung.com/article/2025100115651
[2] https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/area/area_general/1221873.html
(both in Korean)
Couldn’t even be bothered to do a basic 3-2-1! Wow
That's unfortunate.
No. Fortuna had nothing to do with this, this is called bad planning.
It's incompetent really.
Some more details in this article: https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/10/02/FPWGFS...
>the G-Drive’s structure did not allow for external backups.
ah the so called schrodingers drive. It's there unless you try to copy it
Meanwhile, Estonia has a "data embassy" in Luxembourg: https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/data-embassy/
TL;DR: Estonia operates a Tier 4 (highest security) data center in Luxembourg with diplomatic immunity. Can actively run critical government services in real-time, not just backups.
This comment is in some way more interesting than the topic of the article.
what's the point of a storage system with no back up?
repeat after me:
multiple copies; multiple locations; multiple formats.
> all documents be stored exclusively on G-Drive
Does G-Drive mean Google Drive, or "the drive you see as G:"?
If this is Google Drive, what they had locally were just pointers (for native Google Drive docs), or synchronized documents.
If this means the letter a network disk storage system was mapped to, this is a weird way of presenting the problem (I am typing on the black keyboard and the wooden table, so that you know)
G-drive was simply the name of the storage system
The name G-Drive is said to be derived from the word ‘government’.
It's now derived from the word 'gone'
'Gone' up in smoke
Surely there must be something that's missing in translation? This feels like it simply can't be right.
It’s accurate: https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/10/02/FPWGFS...
I agree. No automated fire suppression system for critical infrastructure with no backup?
That may not be a perfect answer. One issue with fire suppression systems and spinning rust drives is that the pressure change etc. from the system can also ‘suppress’ the glass platters in drives as well.
Yikes. That is a nightmare scenario.
Well that works out doesn’t it? Saves them from discovery.
Good example of a Technology trap
I thought clouds could not burn (:
This is the reason the 3, 2, 1 rule for backing up exists.
We will learn nothing
"The day the cloud went up in smoke"
Now imagine they had a CBDC.
I thought most liberal governments gave up on those.
no backup no sympathy
LOL
They might be singing this song now. (To the tune of 'Yesterday' from the Beatles).
For the German enjoyers among us I recommend also this old song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN5mICXIG9M
nice
The Egyptians send their condolences.
Has there been a more recent event, or are you referring to Alexandria?
touché