Question Power losses - should i worry about my setup?

[ComputersOftenIrritateMe]

We had several power losses in quick succession yesterday (flickering lights a few times) while my laptop was plugged in. It uses two power cords and was also plugged into my external monitor.

Now, both laptop cords are themselves plugged into a surge protector, but the monitor is not.

My concern is that there could be electrical damage from the quick succession power losses that could've reached my laptop through the HDMI connecting it to my unprotected monitor.

I understand it sounds unlikely but I have a bad feeling that something could've happened.

 

[Lutfij]

I would hook all devices that are hooked to your laptop, including your laptop up to a surge protector.

I understand it sounds unlikely but I have a bad feeling that something could've happened.
I've had instances where lack of proper grounding caused the grounding to happen through an HDMI/DP/display cable. You're right to be concerned.

 

[ComputersOftenIrritateMe]

I would hook all devices that are hooked to your laptop, including your laptop up to a surge protector.

I understand it sounds unlikely but I have a bad feeling that something could've happened.
I've had instances where lack of proper grounding caused the grounding to happen through an HDMI/DP/display cable. You're right to be concerned.

So would it be obvious if something catastrophic happened, or will I just have to wonder for the foreseeable future.

Would all instances of power outages necessarily result in damaging power surges for PCs?

 

[BFG-9000]

We had several power losses in quick succession yesterday

This is caused by a device called a recloser which disconnects on overload and quickly reconnects. If there is a dead short such as from a squirrel or branch, the repeated automatic zapping burns it away and no manual resetting would be required, such as with a circuit breaker. So it's a way for the power company to avoid having to roll a truck.

As you'd expect, surges can be induced depending on how large the short was and what phase (where in the sinewave) the power is at when it is abruptly disconnected and reconnected. Even relays and switches at 12v DC such as in your car often have quenching diodes to dampen voltage spikes for this reason. The ignition system in your gasoline car, whether switched with breaker-points or transistors, actually relies on this to generate high-voltage spikes from only 12v DC.

All interconnected devices should be plugged into the same outlet because ground voltage can float, particularly when you have a surge suppressor directly shunting voltage into it. If ground voltages are imbalanced, current will flow in-between devices over odd things like the shielding in your HDMI cable which can be really bad because nothing is designed for that.

 

[ComputersOftenIrritateMe]

I would hook all devices that are hooked to your laptop, including your laptop up to a surge protector.

I understand it sounds unlikely but I have a bad feeling that something could've happened.
I've had instances where lack of proper grounding caused the grounding to happen through an HDMI/DP/display cable. You're right to be concerned.

When you say I'm right to be concerned, do you mean it in a 'I should make changes going forwards' kind of way, or a 'I should be concerned about damages that just happened' kind of way?

My primary concern is my files, and while I don't see any immediately recognizable issues, there are thousands of them, and there is no way to actually 'prove' their integrity with how I have things set up.

 

[Zerk2012]

My primary concern is my files, and while I don't see any immediately recognizable issues, there are thousands of them, and there is no way to actually 'prove' their integrity with how I have things set up.

You should have backups for anything you can't afford to loose data wise a drive can fail at any time.

 

[ComputersOftenIrritateMe]

You should have backups for anything you can't afford to loose data wise a drive can fail at any time.

I do. Unfortunately, I was in the process of backing my drive up when this all happened. My external was plugged in at the time. I also keep stuff on the cloud.

That doesn't answer the question though, which is whether or not I need to be concerned about my main drive. So far, the response seems to indicate that this is a genuine issue I should be worried about, but even with my tendency to overthink things like this, I am having a hard time believing that any damage to my PCs data could arise from mere power outage surges traveling through both my monitor and my HDMI cable to reach the laptop. Maybe if there was like a direct lightning strike that could be feasible, but I get the feeling that many people don't even have their PCs plugged into surge protectors, and would probably not give a second thought to outages/flickering/brownouts/whatever it was.

I mean, the monitor itself doesn't even seem to have any issues from the outages.

 

[RAIDGoblin]

This is caused by a device called a recloser which disconnects on overload and quickly reconnects. If there is a dead short such as from a squirrel or branch, the repeated automatic zapping burns it away and no manual resetting would be required, such as with a circuit breaker. So it's a way for the power company to avoid having to roll a truck.

kinda butting in here LOL, but this is really interesting information that I didn't know, I've just spent a bit of time reading about it, thanks for sharing

That doesn't answer the question though, which is whether or not I need to be concerned about my main drive. So far, the response seems to indicate that this is a genuine issue I should be worried about, but even with my tendency to overthink things like this, I am having a hard time believing that any damage to my PCs data could arise from mere power outage surges traveling through both my monitor and my HDMI cable to reach the laptop. Maybe if there was like a direct lightning strike that could be feasible, but I get the feeling that many people don't even have their PCs plugged into surge protectors, and would probably not give a second thought to outages/flickering/brownouts/whatever it was.

you are right to be concerned, but it's probably more of a 'change the way you do things in the future' concern, than a 'something bad has already happened' concern. I wouldn't have thought that a power surge carried down the shielding of a video lead could easily damage a drive, purely because the surge would have had to have been huge to affect anything in that way, probably big enough to have damaged your monitor. The kind of damage you would see from something like that would be chip damage and motherboard damage, it would be something fairly obvious in the way of electrical damage and loss of function

Your right, not many people have PC's plugged into surge protectors, it's something I never even thought about until a building at my work was hit by lightening and almost every powered thing that was smarter than a toaster was fried despite the whole building being on fairly advanced surge protection and corrective equipment. Once bitten twice shy I guess. I have the upstairs socket ring main on a surge protection device from the consumer unit, that way I don't have to think about it, and if thunder is in the area, or if I'm away, I still unplug all my stuff from network as well as from power