Electricity lekeage damaged my hard drive?

[papabapa]

Hi. A couple of days ago I was using my pc when colors got distorted and my computer shut down. Now, when I try to turn it back on, it fades to a black screen after the windows logo.

When I opened up my case to see whats wrong the metal casing of my hard drive give me a little shock, enough to move my hand away by reflex. Then I realized that every metal part of my computer had the same residual electricity. I could feel it on the hard drive, the housing of the optical drive and on the heat sink of my CPU.

My house is not grounded so I understand the problem is coming that way, but I have been using this pc for years without this kind of problem.

I also observed that the electricity is no there when I'm using the pc in safe mode but when I turn it off without unplugging the pc, the electricity starts to build up.

The pc still lets me get into safe mode with some color distortions so I already have backed up the important data. The thing is Windows is corrupted enough so that it can't restore itself (at some point of restoring the screen shows "reverting changes" and we are back at the start )

Now my questions:

Should I be worried by the electricity I feel in the metal parts?

Is there a solution besides grounding the entire house?

If this electricity persists, will I lose my next hard drive like I did with this one?

My drive got permanently damaged or just lost some information and should be fine after a clean install?

Sorry for the long post and thanks for helping!
Happy Holidays!

 

[RolandJS]

First things first! Please purchase, install, and always use an UPS, not merely a surge suppressor; and I guess, you're going to have make sure at least the computer center outlet is actually grounded to the outside. As far as the computer itself, I have no answers except one: please ensure you continue making full images of your OS and Data partitions onto affordable, reliable, external media of your choice.

 

[gdmaclew]

I can't imagine anyone in this day and age living in a house that is not grounded.
How old is your house and where do you live?
You are just asking for trouble (and possibly personal injury) if you do not get your electrical system grounded.
You have been lucky up to now that your PC did not suffer any damage, although maybe it now has.
You should never feel any electricity from your computer case.

 

[papabapa]

First things first! Please purchase, install, and always use an UPS, not merely a surge suppressor; and I guess, you're going to have make sure at least the computer center outlet is actually grounded to the outside. As far as the computer itself, I have no answers except one: please ensure you continue making full images of your OS and Data partitions onto affordable, reliable, external media of your choice.

I will look into the UPS. Thanks for answering!

I can't imagine anyone in this day and age living in a house that is not grounded.
How old is your house and where do you live?
You are just asking for trouble (and possibly personal injury) if you do not get your electrical system grounded.
You have been lucky up to now that your PC did not suffer any damage, although maybe it now has.
You should never feel any electricity from your computer case.

I'm from Argentina and yes my house is quite old. I see what I can do about grounding the house. Thanks for answering

 

[Karadjgne]

Back in the day, no houses used grounds for anything other than appliance circuits, the wire either didn't have an included ground or was cut off as the plugs were only 2 prong. Only recently have plugs moved to ground, with a 3 prong, but on older houses the old 2 prong finally wore out and 3 prong plugs were cheaper, so that was got replaced. So if your house does not have grounded outlets because of lack of ground wires, fixing that could very well be impossible without replacing the existing wires after gutting the house. You'll have to trace the wiring after inspection to figure that out. Not that hard, stick a multimeter to ground/neutral and check for continuity.

A full UPC/APC is a great idea, for multiple reasons, (not a power strip!) as it provides its own means of grounding through the battery.

In safe mode, nothing other than essential drivers gets loaded, so any extras like full gpu, hdd, speakers, USB etc isn't turned on. Powered Pc speakers are quite often the culprit, especially the cheap kind, as they provide power from a brick transformer and have nothing in the way of protective circuitry included. Other popular culprits being USB connectors, especially in the front/top panel and sometimes the wiring between that panel and the mobo gets pinched or scraped on the frame.

 

[papabapa]

Back in the day, no houses used grounds for anything other than appliance circuits, the wire either didn't have an included ground or was cut off as the plugs were only 2 prong. Only recently have plugs moved to ground, with a 3 prong, but on older houses the old 2 prong finally wore out and 3 prong plugs were cheaper, so that was got replaced. So if your house does not have grounded outlets because of lack of ground wires, fixing that could very well be impossible without replacing the existing wires after gutting the house. You'll have to trace the wiring after inspection to figure that out. Not that hard, stick a multimeter to ground/neutral and check for continuity.

A full UPC/APC is a great idea, for multiple reasons, (not a power strip!) as it provides its own means of grounding through the battery.

In safe mode, nothing other than essential drivers gets loaded, so any extras like full gpu, hdd, speakers, USB etc isn't turned on. Powered Pc speakers are quite often the culprit, especially the cheap kind, as they provide power from a brick transformer and have nothing in the way of protective circuitry included. Other popular culprits being USB connectors, especially in the front/top panel and sometimes the wiring between that panel and the mobo gets pinched or scraped on the frame.

I will look into the USB connectors, I have a feeling they are the ones causing the trouble,
Thanks a lot for the information on a UPC/APC grounding solution and for the insight on the devices that might be causing trouble!