Surge or Power Supply?

[rodan]

What would cause the harddrive to fail, and, maybe even, damage memory: A weak power supply or , would it take a surge? For instance, if the power supply was on the weak side, could it damage a harddrive and memory? If not, could it be the surge protector is not protecting?

 

[Heisenberg]

If the power supply goes or is going bad, it could produce a spike that will fry hardware. A power surge can also do that. If you have a surge protector, it's not nearly as likely, but no surge protector is 100% effective. A big enough surge can get through.

 

[Damascus]

Sometimes hard drives just fail. Sometimes they die because of excessive heat,
although this is rare outside of cramped servers with high speed SCSI drives.