Have you ever lost a PC due to bad power?

[az]

So, have any of you ever lost a PC or PSU or suffered component damage because of bad power?

Ever had data loss because of a blackout or brownout?

Ever had stability problems because of flaky power?

(My answers are no, no, and no - thus I don't use a UPS, and now my PC's a laptop anyway.)

[VJ]

Yes, yes and probabely.

I have encoutered several power failures while working. While none yielded
a corrupt file system (I could boot when the power was restored, and
continue with having to repair stuff other than occasionally files that
were open) it did yield to loss of data that was unsaved up to that point.
And therefor a lot of annoyance.
One harddisk I had stopped working, which I think may have had to do with
powerblackouts (I suffered 15 of them in a 2 week period). It was replaced
under warranty though (so I'm not sure about the problem).

Just to prevent such annoyances, I am using a UPS (mge evolution 2200)
which gives me between 15 minutes (full load, 2 displays) to 45 minutes
(light load, one screen). Everything connected to my PC is plugged into to
it (usb hub, router, zipdrive, external hdd, photo camera when charging,
mobile phone/pda when charging, even a desklamp (!), ...), apart from
printer and scanner; so when the power goes, I can continue (and still
have light to do so ).


Jörg

[Mehen]

I've lost a mobo due to poor psu, which might have only occurred due to bad power. Technically the mobo still worked, but the pins and connector was all burnt and I didn't want to risk frying anything else. I think generally if you have a good PSU and use a surge protector (or UPS) you should be fine.

I had one PSU with which my computer would shut off with any tiny little surge (usually in mild thunderstorms). I replaced it with this Vantec and haven't had any problems since.

[gt40]

Does Lighting count?
I lost EVERY network card in my network (5 PC's), a switch, and a router .
The odd power failure has yeilded no real adverse effects - only 3 of the PC's have UPS's.

[schmosef]

yep

[ND66]

Lighting strike killed the MB & network card.

.

[Lizzard[MPE]]

yes to all of the above.

[Rakido]

if lighting counts, i lost my Amiga 500 ..

[Brian Ellis]

Yes, yes and yes. I've had a HDD plough a head into the magnetic coating on two occasions due to switching surges.

Worst case happened in 1981 (pre-PC); I had the firm's accounts on an HP-87 with 4 floppy drives (HDDs were VERY unreliable then and were limited to 5 Mb). 1 drive was for the software, 1 for the backup software, 1 for the data, 1 for the backup data. A power surge caused ALL 4 discs to be instantaneouly erased. No software, no data, and this was 11 months into the financial year, needless to say. Fortunately, I had hard copy of everything, so we were legally OK, but it was a PITA for tax returns and year-end cloture.

In those days, UPSs were unheard of for small computer systems.

I have had UPSs on all computers for many years and have been glad of them.

To those with UPSs, test them on full load every year. My experience is a 50% loss of capacity in 3 years and 90% in 5 years. The batteries must be changed regularly.

Have lost at least 5 modems to lightning!

[Fat Tone]

I've lost the ethernet port of my cable modem and an entire UPS due to power cuts.

I can think of a few occassions when I've been extremely grateful for the presence of a UPS

[ZokesPro]

Not sure, no and yes. Flaky power mainly caused bizarre problems with the monitor. Also had a lightning strike that fried the WAN port on my router, the damned thing never worked correctly after that, I wonder why?

[az]

Oh right, I remember, I lost a 14.4 modem to lightning.

[Gurm]

I've lost modems to power surges on phone lines.

I've lost PSU's motherboards, CPU's, and RAM to surges.

I've lost PSU's to brownouts.

I've lost hard disks due to faulty power that made them eat themselves.

And I've lost Zip drives due to... poor build quality. ROFL.

[Dr Mordrid]

All of the above, which is why the lab has a whole-room power conditioner (Empower) in addition to UPS's. They can also help if you have an emergency generator (we have a 13kw Generac). The waveform on these is often more like a square wave, which some gear chokes on.

Still, these can't help when your 3 year old sticks a screwdriver into the back of a systems power supply

[Claymonkey]

Still, these can't help when your 3 year old sticks a screwdriver into the back of a systems power supply

That's why I don't have a 3 year old

Seriously though. I've lost at least 5-6 PSU's to power surges, a motherboard, a 14.4 modem (most I ever spent on a modem as well). I've also repaired a few. I'm a BIG fan of UPS's. They just save your bacon more times than you can imagine. If you're thinking about it now and you don't do it... when not if you have a problem you'll look back on this and feel like an idiot.