>>1227338>Are power surges a common issue?For me, yes. Probably get a full power out about once every 50-60 days. Sometimes it lasts for 10 minutes, sometimes for 10 hours. Catastrophic power loss is huge stress across all components, obviously some much more than others. Spinning HDDs can get brutalized and accrue significant damage, some repairable, some not. I lost three of them before I put everything on battery back-up. Also, have had two PSUs burn out, even though they appeared random and not exactly when a power out occurred, they were probably stressed by surviving several power outs.
Keep in mind, a physical power out isn't the only danger. Just as damaging is constant variation in the electric current. The house I'm in has no line protection, so there are plenty of times I see lights flicker & dim, sometimes brighten. We had a really weird, noisy power surge once that took out one of our circuit breakers & I had to replace it. Every light in the house about doubled in brightness for a few seconds just before breakers started tripping and one literally burned out with fire & smoke & melted copper. Lost a surge protector in that that probably saved a computer that just happened to be powered off at the time.
I've always believed in line conditioning and always used at least surge protectors. But now I've got religion about it and put powerful 4500 Joule protection on all my electronics circuits, plus battery back-up for anything with computers & hard drives (I've several external HDDs) & routers/switches.
A surge protector will also provide some protection for every outlet on a circuit it's plugged into. Not full protection or line conditioning, but 2 or 3 surge protectors on one circuit gives some cushion to everything plugged into that circuit.
Before anyone asks, I do live in the U.S. Just bordering rural & suburban in an area with 70 year old telephone poles, electric lines, and places where cars & lightening hit them occasionally.
