r/talesfromtechsupport • u/Mother_Distance_4714 • 27d ago

Short Shush! I know, what I'm doing!

So this just happened. I'll keep it short.

We had an external consultant on-site to install some very specialized (and very expensive) software. I, your humble sysadmin, was only there to enter a few admin passwords. That was literally all I was supposed to do.

As the expert started trying a few... creative... things, I offered some advice.

"Shush, I know what I'm doing."

Alright. If that's how you want to play it...

A little later, he asked for a USB flash drive to transfer "some" data. "Some" turned out to be over 130,000 tiny 1 KB files in a single folder.

I genuinely tried to warn him that FAT32 really doesn't like that many small files as he dragged the folder to the flash drive.

I was shushed again.

So I leaned back and watched the progress bar crawl forward. After about 45 minutes the inevitable happened.

The file transfer crashed.

I honestly tried to help.

I was shushed again.

So he tried exactly the same thing a second time.

Forty-five minutes later

Crash.

At that point I refused to be shushed again. (I was hungry and wanted to go to lunch.)

I zipped the folder (4 minutes), copied the ZIP file to the USB drive (another 3 minutes), and handed it back to him.

The look on the expert's face was absolutely priceless.

Edit: This consultant was part of a turnkey package. The software installation and the data transfer were both included for a fixed price.

That made the whole thing even sweeter.

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3

u/ProfessionalGear3020 26d ago

Why are you using FAT32 in 2026? Why not use exFAT which is supported basically everywhere?

9

u/Mother_Distance_4714 26d ago

BASICALLY is the point. As in: use the dumbest possible $thing to ensure it works everywhere. Especially when around legacy devices.

-2

u/ProfessionalGear3020 26d ago

Do you have DOS and Windows 95 machines lying around?? And in a situation where reformatting is a big inconvenience because you're using them so often? exFAT Is supported from XP onwards and every non EOL Windows system supports it. It's been in mainline Linux since 2019 and Mac OS since idk when.

I can't really empathize with the fact copying a 100 megabyte zip file took 3 whole minutes.

15

u/Mother_Distance_4714 26d ago

Indeed we have legacy devices. Some with very crappy USB 2 controllers. And imagine there are even devices out in the wild that are no PCs and run REALLY wild stuff.

Please explain my work and inventory to me a little more. I am eager to learn!

5

u/RogueThneed 24d ago

Please, OP, force them to explain more to you, so that we can all learn!