embix

Just rewrite it with 80% functionality and force migrations on the users. Once the remaining 20% “edge cases” that require serious effort hop to the next job - where you where hired to “maintain” such a system and “just add a small feature here and there”. Ooops.

all other employers demand modern technologies

There are a lot of employers that’ll throw good money at you for maintaining and extending their outdated crap. Have you ever considered learning COBOL?

They played us for complete fools!

Yeah, there is a wide spread in distribution. Some blood cells, skin epithelium and some gastric cells only live for a few days.

As most of the human cells die and get replaced within a few years, humans are already beings of Theseus.

An American air-to-air missile modified for naval use, deployed on a land based Warsaw Pact launcher. Now that’s something!

So, basically this?

Better yet: Fuck’em without breaking the contract.

First thing to do is check SMART data to see if there are any fails. Then looking at usage hours, spin ups, pre-fails / old-age to get a general idea how worn the drive is and for how long you could make use of it depending on risk acceptance.

If there are already several clusters relocated and multiple spin up fails, I’d probably return the drive.

Apart from all the reliability stuff: I’d check the content of the drive (with a safe machine) - if it wasn’t wiped you might want to notify the previous owner, so she can change her passwords or notify customers about the leak (in compliance to local regulations) etc. - even if you don’t exploit that data, the merchants/dealers in the chain might already have.