How often can powerfail corrupt a disk drive?

[David Cook]

Here in Florida, we've had lots of power fluctionations and
power outages lately.

I visited a customer who lost power during the last hurricane.
It now seems that the single event of power outage corrupted
his disk drives data (such that the directory structure in the
\windows sub-tree on a Win-XP system was scrambled).

Note that no lightning was involved...just a simple loss of
power from the power company.

We had to re-format the drive had re-install everything
(i.e. the OS and all 3rd party software, etc).

I was somewhat surprised that the disk did NOT seem to
suffer any permanent damage. (I say this based on the
fact that the formatter ran thru the disk ok with no apparent
errors, tho I suppose there could now be 'bad blocks' generated.)

So, questions are:
(1) Is it reasonable to 'trust' that the disk is ok to use again?
(2) Is this sort of event (scrambling a disk's structure/data)
from power cutoff at all common?
(3) Are all such power-interruptions mostly equivalent, in
the size of the voltage/amperage 'spikes' that get generated?

TIA...

Dave

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Tell your customer he needs to make a small investment
in a good battery backup unit before he totally loses his big
investment in his PC.

Visit: http://www.apcc.com/solutions/index.cfm?segmentID=1

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect Your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.aspx

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:

| Here in Florida, we've had lots of power fluctionations and
| power outages lately.
|
| I visited a customer who lost power during the last hurricane.
| It now seems that the single event of power outage corrupted
| his disk drives data (such that the directory structure in the
| \windows sub-tree on a Win-XP system was scrambled).
|
| Note that no lightning was involved...just a simple loss of
| power from the power company.
|
| We had to re-format the drive had re-install everything
| (i.e. the OS and all 3rd party software, etc).
|
| I was somewhat surprised that the disk did NOT seem to
| suffer any permanent damage. (I say this based on the
| fact that the formatter ran thru the disk ok with no apparent
| errors, tho I suppose there could now be 'bad blocks' generated.)
|
| So, questions are:
| (1) Is it reasonable to 'trust' that the disk is ok to use again?
| (2) Is this sort of event (scrambling a disk's structure/data)
| from power cutoff at all common?
| (3) Are all such power-interruptions mostly equivalent, in
| the size of the voltage/amperage 'spikes' that get generated?
|
| TIA...
|
| Dave

 

[I like toys and cake]

Here in Florida, we've had lots of power fluctionations and
power outages lately.

So, questions are:
(1) Is it reasonable to 'trust' that the disk is ok to use again?

Yes if it formatted OK then is is more than likely fine but running a
full surface scan would be wise

(2) Is this sort of event (scrambling a disk's structure/data)
from power cutoff at all common?

Its not uncommon especially when write caching is enabled on the drive

(3) Are all such power-interruptions mostly equivalent, in
the size of the voltage/amperage 'spikes' that get
generated?

There will be filtering on the grid that will keep any surges within a
certain range (controlled mostly by fuses and circuit breakers) but as
fluctuations are unplanned it is impossible to say with any certainty
how severe they would be or that they will all be similar in severity.

It really is worthwhile investing in an Uninterruptible Power Supply