Related:

• maximum Maytag mode: What a {washing machine} or, by extension, any hard disk is in when it's being used so heavily that it's shaking like an old Maytag with an unbalanced load.
  If prolonged for any length of time, can lead to disks becoming {walking drives}....
• washing machine n. 1. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets.
  So called because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading' access to the media packs -- and, of course, they were always set on `spin cycle'....
• walking drives: n. An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days when they were huge, clunky {washing machine}s.
  Those old {dinosaur} parts carried terrific angular momentum...
• washing machine: n. Old-style 14-inch hard disks in floor-standing cabinets.
  So called because of the size of the cabinet and the `top-loading' access to the media packs --- and, of course, they were always set on `spin cycle'....
• walking drives n. An occasional failure mode of magnetic-disk drives back in the days when they were huge, clunky washing machines.
  Those old dinosaur parts carried terrific angular momentum...
• farming n. [Adelaide University, Australia] What the heads of a disk drive are said to do when they plow little furrows in the magnetic media.
  Associated with a crash. Typically used as follow...
• boot v.,n. [techspeak; from `by one's bootstraps'] To load and initialize the operating system on a machine.
  This usage is no longer jargon (having passed into techspeak) but has given rise to some derivatives that are still jargon....
• letterbomb 1. n. A piece of email containing live data intended to do nefarious things to the recipient's machine or terminal.
  It used to be possible, for example, to send letterbombs that would lock up some specific kinds of terminals when they are viewed, so thoroughly that the user must cycle power (see cycle, sense 3) to unwedge them....
• phase of the moon n. Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend.
  Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine....