A funny excerpt from the latest issue of Computer Weekly:

Everyone knows that computers can be fragile, but some users still treat them as though they were indestructible. Hard disk recovery firm Ontrack has compiled its top five stories of data loss in 2006.

Fifth place belongs to a user who left a banana to rot on top of his external hard drive. The rotten mush seeped through the casing, where it wrecked the circuitry, preventing the drive from running. The circuit board was repaired sufficiently to enable the drive’s data to be recovered.

In number four is that perennial favourite, the people carrier. Someone left a laptop in the path of a moving one earlier this year. Similar examples include a rucksack full of hard drives that was backed over by a truck.

Third place goes to a manufacturer of expensive underwater digital cameras. Unfortunately for one unhappy customer who took the camera on a snorkelling holiday to Barbados, the camera was far from waterproof.

Proving the cliché that academics have brains, but no common sense, is a university professor who head a squeaking noise coming from the drive of his new PC. The nutty professor removed the casing and sprayed the drive with WD-40, thus stopping both the squeaking noise and the drive itself.

But the award for 2006’s most unnecessary assault on a disc drive goes to a user who sent his damaged hard drive to Ontrack wrapped in a pair of dirty socks. The original problem was unremarkable; the damage caused by the combination of sweat and fibres was not.

Finally, something I was e-mailed. If your IT Department is throwing a Christmas party this month, I hope it’s as fun and crazy as this one