Repair Stories

Going Medieval on a Broken Hard Drive

Repair was pretty important to medieval knights—the legendary Bavarian knight Ulrich von Lichtenstein claimed to break 300 lances in a month of jousting. So what luck that a repair-savvy knight showed up just in time to help the Denver Academy IT department change a hard drive in one of their iMacs.

Denver Academy is a 370-student K-12 private school in Colorado designed to “meet the needs of students with learning differences.” Their three IT technicians—Anne Gurley, Anthony Slaughter, and Doug Pratt—keep busy: they maintain 51 iMacs, 50 Mac Minis, 70 MacBooks, 20 PCs, 5 MacBook Pros, and 90 iPads.

“We used a time machine and revisited the medieval period to perform this repair,” they explained in a recent repair story. “We had some unfinished business, and after all, Camelot is known for its Knight life.”

mending a broken hard drive at Denver Academy
Sir Anne unscrews the LCD

The repair went well: Sir Anne and her helpful squires pulled the front glass off with a pair of heavy-duty suction cups, pried out the hard drive, re-routed cables, and put it all back together. Sir Anne is aware that she is neither a typical knight nor a typical IT technician. She jokes, “On my Christmas list this year is the tee shirt that reads ‘I am the IT guy’ across the front. We love breaking stereotypes at Denver Academy.”

After the repair, the sword was returned to the drama department—it ended up being a rather blunt tool for removing tiny electronics screws. But with tool kits and a fighting spirit, the knights remain prepared to battle again.