T 1.8 Dust, soiling

Despite the increasing use of electronics in IT, information technology still relies on mechanical components. Such components include floppy disks, hard disks, removable disks, floppy disk drives, printers, and scanners, but also processor and power supply unit fans. The increasing demands on the quality and speed of these components means they must operate more and more precisely. Even minor impurities can cause a device to malfunction. Large amounts of dust and dirt can be generated, for example, in connection with

• work on walls, raised floors, or other parts of the building;
• hardware upgrades or updates; and/or
• unpacking devices (e.g. due to styrofoam packaging materials).

This dust and dirt can cause the corresponding hardware to malfunction.

In most cases, the safety circuits built in to the devices switch them off in time. Although this may reduce the resulting amount of damage, repair costs, and downtime, the corresponding device will still be unavailable during this time.

Examples:

• A server was installed in a media room together with a copying machine and a normal paper fax machine, after which the processor fan and the power supply fan slowed down due to the large amount of dust in the room. The failure of the processor fan caused the server to crash sporadically. Eventually, the power supply unit fan failed as well, causing the power supply unit to overheat and short-circuit, which in turn resulted in the total failure of the server.
• To hang a wall panel in an office, holes were drilled into the wall by the building services personnel. The employee left his office for a short time so the work could be done. When he returned to his workplace, he discovered that his PC did not work any more. The reason for the failure was the dust generated by the drilling, which had penetrated into the PC power supply unit through the ventilation slots.