It’s getting mighty windy here and my lights keep flickering like they’re about to go out. I’m busily working on a huge project that requires the use of my computer. If the power does go out, what might happen to my computer? FWIW, I have a really good surge protector (not sure of the grade thought).
DC
All I can say (until someone with the main answer comes along) is make sure you save a lot. Even if it’s in a program like Word where it autosaves - it never fails that something will happen the most productive 9 minutes and 59 seconds after the last autosave.
Don’t forget to hit save!
Better than a surge protector, is an Uniterruptible Power Supply (UPS). It will protect you from power surges, power loss, uneven power. You usually have 10 - 20 minutes or more to finish your work and shut down properly. I have been using them for about 12 years and have never had any loss from power outages or “flickering lights”. Well worth the money you will spend.
With a “really good” power bar you should be ok.
Of course you should be aware a $30 power bar does not mean it’s very good. I’ve got a top end Belkin ($90 CAN) and an APC UPS ($60) which you might want to invest in if your computer means anything to you.
But in terms of your main question, you should be ok. Of course if your power dies, what are you going to do with the data that’s saved on the PC? You’ll have to power it up somehow.
Sudden power drops can potentially damage the power supply or motherboard. It isn’t exactly a common occurrence, but with the conditions you describe a UPS would be a good investment. They aren’t cheap, but one may save you valuable hours of lost work.
Your question was comcerned with an outage harming your computer.
The answer,simply stated,is No.
It would be no different than shutting down.
Now------if the question is would an instantaneous interruption.followed by a relatively immediate system restoration-be harmful -----he answer is maybe.
It would depend on the length of the outage--------- a restoratrion after several seconds might increase the voltage in any capacitive circuits resulting in a surge when the power is restored.
As to the matter of losing some material in progress---------yes------but that is not damage to your machine.
Any time you turn your machine off you should wait a couple of minutes before turning it back on—this gives some of your internals an opportunity to discharge.
Again–will a mere outage harm you?------no!
You create an outage every time you shut down.
EZ
No cite, but I read an online article not long ago on some techie-magazine site, testing out the various things we’re supposed to never do (leaving floppy disks near magnets, etc). The one way they caused any damage with a sudden power outage was when data was being written to a USB hard drive. They couldn’t get the drive to work again, at all.
Thanks for all the help. I lost my internet connection soon after posting the OP so I just shut down the computer after all just to be safe.
I second this.
Get a UPS with automatic voltage regulation. Power supply issues can ruin you hardware.
After trouble shooting three different computers inside a month that had troubles, apparently due to WWII wiring in the house, I decided that saving yourself the trouble of figuring out what’s wrong with your box (because nothing goes wrong is worth a lot imho.
Now I use and reccomend one of these:
Belkin f6c500-unv
Btw, get good power supply for inside your box.
I use and reccomend one of these:
Enermax eg425p-ve
That seems awfully long. Every tech manual I’ve seen recommends “a few seconds” or ten seconds if you want to be extra cautious. Is there really any utility to waiting longer?
If you’re lucky enough for the power to just drop out, sure.
Quite often though, power outages are accompanied (or caused) by huge voltage spikes, brownouts, and other nasties that really can make your computer a rather unhappy camper. At work, the last building we were in had a lot of outages. We usually lost a computer or two with every outage. I personally lost 2 hard drives in about 2 years there due to power fluctuations. I didn’t mind. It gave me an excuse to upgrade to a bigger drive. 
More often outages are the result of phase faults on a delta system or ground faults/phase faults on a grounded Y system.
These, however, arern’t “flickering” problems.
The problem described sounds like primaries on a delta system running through a treed area.
Or a line problem due to a bad connector,or a bad switch somewhere in the circuoooooooooit.
There IS an ‘inrush’ factor in restoration after a lo-o-ong outage. maybe even a standing wave at higher voltages -----but a residential distribution system has enoug transformers on the lines to soak up most of those.
Most surges in my part of the country are usually a boost in ground potential due to lightning.
And so it goes!
EZ is out of here
Anecdote time!
During a windy storm, a tree came down and knocked out the power to my house. It involved loud reports, and the exterior of the house by the junction box was charred. Luckily, a fire did not start. (The tree fell on the power lines themselves, ripping them off the house.)
Every single appliance in the house that had no surge protection was lost. Many had surge protectors, though, all of which were the cheapest pieces of crap you could imagine. Old, too.
Both computers survived without a problem.
One television was fine. The other, however, was not grounded. The power strip was connected to a 3-prong to 2-prong adapter and plugged into the wall. That television refused to turn on again, and was sent for servicing.
Microwaves and VCRs were totalled.
Gaming systems, also plugged into the non-grounded power strip, survived.
Interestingly, and expectedly, almost every power strip in the house was totaled. They function via suicide.
Large appliances like refrigerators and washer/dryers were unfazed.
Now this has me curious, as I’ve never actually asked anyone the question.
I run a surge protector (of course) as well as a UPS. Given a complete power outage, it’ll do about the same damage as a hard shut-off. It’s rare (i.e. never happened here) for the power to cut out, then come back in a matter of a few seconds. Or even minutes, for that matter.
So what would be the chance of an SP and UPS to not protect the computer in case this ever happens? And other than shutting down at the first sign of lightning, is there any other way to protect the circuitry? (Forget about any applications being run at the time)
It would take a lot more than a routine power outage to cause any problem if you are using a good UPS. A good UPS will react almost instantaneously, cutting everything downstream off from the “mains” (household) current, and generating it’s own AC using battery power.
I don’t know the current state of the low-end UPS market, but ten years ago, even many moderately expensive units [several hundred dollars up to a thousand] didn’t do too well in the “instantaneous response” category. The trick was to stick to the companies that were best regarded, and which made it their primary business [like APC]. Today, it seems everyone and their mother has a UPS brand out there, I’m not saying that they aren’t very good (designs do tend to improve over time, and as the market grew, COTS [cheap off the shelf] parts were developed that make it much easier and cheaper to do the job right.
You MUST check the specs to see how fact your unit reacts to various types of failures, and what it is intended to protect against. [Many companies don’t make this easy!] I’d trust published specs more than guarantees and brand names Several years ago, even APC, which had made some of the best UPSs for decades, yielded to market demands with a few low-end lines that broke the hard and fast rules laid down in their own promotional literature from a few years earlier.
One final thing: I wouldn’t combine a UPS with s surge protector, either “upstream” or “downstream” of the UPS. It won’t add any protection to a good UPS, and can even keep the UPS from doing its job. Modern UPSs aren’t meant to operate without a good ground [Never use one as a portable AC source], and can be unsafe, if they lose their connection the building ground due to a cheap surge protector blowing. Fancy UPSs may not even operate unless they detect a good ground, which a blown surge protector may not provide. It would be ironic if your UPS cut out, because of a cheap surge protector upstream.
This info may be a few years out of date. I haven’t researched it lately [pats his “old reliable” UPS that’s saved his neck many times]
UPS with good ground connection through power line/outlet is highly recommended. Allows orderly shutdown.
A three prong plug in a two prong adapters is NOT grounded.
A sudden loss of power is equivalent to hitting Big Red.
Start up frequently entails running other programs, e.g. scandisk, before finishing boot procedure and may also entail loss of data.