That Friday where 6 dead hard drives showed up in one shift

I work at a small repair shop in Phoenix, and last Friday was NUTS - we got 6 drives from different customers all with total head crashes or fried boards, more than I see in a normal month. Turns out there was a voltage surge across half the city from a blown transformer near the industrial district, and all these folks brought their computers in within 4 hours of each other. Has anyone else ever seen a single utility issue cause THAT many simultaneous drive failures?

2 comments

2 Comments

alice33619d ago

Phoenix has pretty solid infrastructure overall, but that industrial district transformer has been flagged by APS for years. I actually saw 4 of those drives myself at the shop on 16th Street. But here is the thing, a blown transformer would cause a brownout or a drop, not a surge. Surges come from the grid snapping back after a fault clears. If all 6 drives really fried at once, it would have taken out way more than just hard drives, like TV's, routers, and anything plugged in. Most likely those drives had existing weak sectors or failing firmware, and the brownout just finished them off at the same time. So I respectfully think you might be mixing up cause and effect here.

jade_singh19d ago

My own shop took a hit from a brownout back in 2017, not a surge, and I lost 3 drives in one night. They all had some bad sectors already according to the SMART data I pulled later, but they were running fine until that voltage dropped. Once the power came back, those drives just never spun up again. So your point about the brownout finishing them off lines up with what I saw. The thing is, people blame surges for everything, but a steady voltage drop can do just as much damage to already weak hardware. I'd bet money those drives had issues before the transformer even blinked.