DNG-9911 - The Infinite Hard Drive
Last modified: April 28, 2025
Key Details
- Item: Common-looking internal hard drive in a 500GB physical size, formatted in FAT32.
- Manufacturer: ████ Storage Solutions, well-acknowledged Taiwan electronic brand.
- Year of Production: 2007.
- Condition: Exterior slightly worn-off with scratches being nearly not visible. Regular SATA type of connection; no sings of tampering or repair.
- Discovery: This hard drive was acquired from a used electronics store in ██████, California for $20. Its behavior was strange and was discovered by a college student attempting to utilize the hard drive for backup purposes.
Reported Anomalies
Unlimited Storage Capacity - within FAT32 constraints
This device has the capacity to store as many files as needed on the hard drive, really outperforming the 500GB stated in the specifications. We used it extensively for storing several petabytes of data without ever seeing it get full. In fact, before it filled up, we lost our patience.
Checksum Integrity
Copies made onto this drive are perfect replicas, even when moved and copied back. Checksums, even of MD5 and SHA-256, all still matched, showing no data loss or corruption.
Inability to Delete Files
Put a file on this drive, and it is there to stay—appears that way, anyway. Deletion attempts from simple to advanced techniques don't work. Just refresh the folder, and the files are back like nothing happened.
Immutable State
You cannot rewrite, move, or change anything on this drive. Anything you do to a file, once you try, immediately reverses itself. It is as if the drive itself has a mind and just refuses to give up what it has.
Pre-Existing Files
It had a few preloaded files on it when first plugged in. Most were innocently named, such as "photo1.jpg" or "backup_2007.doc." But others carried foreboding titles: "DON'T OPEN.txt," or redacted strings, such as "██████████.log." As of this writing, cryptic attempts to open these have thus far proved fruitless.
Discovery
This weird hard drive found its way into the hands of █████ ████, a student studying computer science at ████████ University, who had purchased it from some dusty second-hand electronics store in ██████, California, for just $20. The student just needed a cheap means to back up his school projects.
Things took a weird turn when they noticed the preloaded files and couldn't delete them. They'd try and use it just the same, thinking perhaps it was an old broken drive, but then decided that would have no storage limitation. Perplexed and amused by this, their story wound up on technology forums; eventually, several researchers stumbled upon it and acquired a drive in question for closer observation.
Investigative Experiments
Capacity Test
Procedure: The team loaded it with files from 1GB all the way up to 100TB-just about pushing the capacity to absurd levels.
Result: The drive took it all in stride without a single hitch. It always showed 500GB of available space, no matter how much data was added to it. It was like the magician's hat from which a stream of scarves would not stop coming out.
Data Integrity Test
Procedure: The files copied onto the drive were transferred back across to another device and their checksums compared.
Result: The perfect match each time. The drive didn't corrupt, lose, or change a single byte of data.
Deletion Test
Procedure: Initially, standard deletion commands were tried, file shredding tools, and even a complete reformat.
Result: None worked. The files always showed up again, ghosts that would not go away. Even reformatting had no effect—the drive simply reset itself back to the same state -.
Pre-Existing Files Analysis
Procedure: Researchers used a variety of tools to attempt to open or analyse the files already on the drive.
Result: The normal files were like images and text that opened, but they displayed very mundane content. The cryptic files? Perfectly inaccessible. They couldn't be opened, moved, or even renamed, and their metadata showed no creation or modification dates.
Theories
Temporal or Dimensional Anomaly
Other researchers believe that it is tapping into some other dimension or timeline, one where the storage space is infinite; this would at least show that it has its way of storing so much data without any visible physical containment.
Supernatural involvement
Others think that the drive is cursed or haunted, possibly due to its history or some previous owner. The refusal to delete the files could be symbolic of something.
Advanced Unknown Technology
Other members feel that the drive makes use of a technology beyond our present knowledge-holographic or quantum storage. If this is so, then it's way better than anything in the market at the moment.
Hidden Surveillance or Experimentation
These weird preloaded files have given birth to a number of theories-that it might be part of some secret experiment or a surveillance project. The fact that its contents cannot be tampered with adds fuel to this theory.
Notable Incidents
Accidental Infinite Backup Loop
One of our staff inadvertently created an automated backup on this disc. The procedure then, while he was out on vacation, proceeded to make hundreds of duplicate backups of the same data over several days. Even after loading the drive with more than 300TB of data, the drive worked as if it were normal.
Unsettling Metadata Anomaly
A check showed that the mysterious file "DON'T OPEN.txt" was timestamped a few hours in the future. When that exact moment in time arrived, the file was again selected, precisely at that timestamp.
Misleading Forensic Investigation
We passed the drive on to a data recovery specialist who promised us he would wipe it clean. But when we plugged it in again afterwards, all our files were there, sitting where we had left them, like nothing had ever occurred.
Current Status
The hard drive is now locked within a facility and watched by someone 24/7. Researchers can request access for experiments, but under very strict protocols.
Cautionary Notes
While this drive has unlimited capacity, as is apparently useful, it would in fact be dangerous to handle sensitive or otherwise confidential information on it, given that it will refuse to delete or modify any files in any way. The researchers were cautioned to use it with trepidation and not to store anything critical on it.