Well that was fun... (Someone shoot me.)

[cshank4]

Well, as some of you may or may not know, my hard-drives went to hell on both my computers due to a massive lightining blast and a pretty crappy surge protector.

So, whilst I was in the middle of raising money for an 80 Gig HD for BOTH my computers (That's a good $160 Dollars. And, I have no job to boot, plus I was saving up for a new Bass guitar...) me and my family happened to move across country.

So, then, I ordered my new HD with some money I got with my birthday...

And fedex lost it.

Oh no, not just 'Woops we sent it to the wrong adress' lost. We're talking 'somewhere in geosynchronous' orbit lost. So, I managed to get my money payed back by FedEx (after about a week of calling them and almost ready to hire a lawyer over the fact that it was, indeed, their fault.)

Thus began a new cycle until I finally got my storage devices. (The search for the Windows install disc is another story too long for one post.)

[chuck_starchaser]

Life would be so much easier without computers...

My life is an endless stream of mouse problems, if it makes you feel better.

[CoffeeBot]

(The search for the Windows install disc is another story too long for one post.)

I found it for you. It's right here: http://fedora.redhat.com/download/

::plays innocent::

Sorry about the drive losses...I can totally sympathize. At least you don't have the mental anguish of knowing it was your own damn fault for ruining the drives. I've typoed things on several occasions when rebuilding my systems, and ended up wiping out probably a terayte worth of data over the past few years. So, chin up, cshank, at least you can blame it on forces outside of your own control

[cshank4]

Eh, I suppose so...


Of course, it would have helped if I wasn't using an almost (I kid you not.) 7 year old Surge protector. But oh well.


And don't worry, I have Slackware on this computer too ^_^.

[klauss]

It wouldn't man.
I know no surge protector that will shield you from a lightning bolt.
Not even from a low-voltage line falling on you phone line (low-voltage menas, for those not knowledgable, 13500V - med-voltage=30000-60000V or so, I think, and high voltage=150000-300000V). And I'm not just telling... I'm talking out of experience here.

[CubOfJudahsLion]

And the moral is: don't live in places with climate. Also, that being a luddite is cheap.

[Wisq]

I wouldn't know from experience, but a UPS might. They're designed to cut out at the first sign of trouble and shunt to battery, hence they have a lot of capacitance, reactive capability, and stuff to blast through before hitting the PCs themselves. That's not to say it'd be usable afterwards, though.

They also come with huge equipment-replacement warranties -- which is where the real value of a modern surge protector comes from.

Certainly I'm sure the datacentre-class UPS systems could withstand a lightning hit. It's just a question of how much lower you have to go before it can't.

[klauss]

When the lightning thing happened to me, the 13,5KV entered through the modem, went and cracked the hard drive open (in two halves - really cool), melted the surge protector, went to the UPS, melted the breaker and the sockets on it (although somehow the battery survived... odd), went to the power line, and made the... hm... "térmica" in spanish, what's the word... well, that thing cut all power. Hopefully, it stopped right there (the differential didn't get whacked), so yes, the UPS does stop it a bit (I guess it didn't reach the differential because the UPS helped a bit), but it won't save your computer. And that's 13,5KV... we're not talking about the lightning bolt itself, with millions of volts which can create a voltaic arc from the clouds down to the earth... really, there's no stopping it - only a thick gold-plated copper conductor wired to the earth could save you. And by thick I mean 20-30cm thick.

[Zeog]

So your modem was unprotected? I've recently seen surge protectors that also have several "protecting slots" for phone line and network plugs.

Because of the unfortunate setup

Code: Select all

phone line -- modem -- PC -- surge protector -- UPS -- power line -- ground
(13,5kV)                                                             (0V)

your computer happened to be exactly between the "13,5kV phone line" and the ground (0V). Those 13,5kV HAD to go through your computer. With a setup of everything connected to a surge protector those 13,5kV could have melted it and gone directly through your power supply into the ground. Your system would have sat on a constant potential, no electricity going through it. (Well, there is still the possibility of going through your PC, you, your shoes and the carpet but one hopes that the fuses of the power plant die first.)

So would the right setup be as follows?

Code: Select all

outside (power/phone/LAN/audio) -- surge protector -- UPS -- PC
    |              |
phone line    power line
13,5kV            0V

Possibly move all the audio equipment also behind the surge protector if it supports anntena wires.

[klauss]

Nope. The surge protector was on the phone line.
The protector itself melted, opening the circuit as it was supposed to. But 13.5KV was a bit too much, and it created a voltaic arc that skipped the protector (that melted the casing as well), and went into the modem and blah.

It so happened that on the initial melt, the ground line got covered by plastic (hence isolated) and so presented a higher resistance to elecriticy than my computer - the intelligent bolt chose to melt my computer as a result.

Perhaps you can say it was a bad design - the surge protector should have been designed in such a way as to never melt that way... but... well... it wasn't. Of course, I never expected 13.5KV coming from the phone line, my setup was supposed to protect me from the consumer network which uses 220V.

It was something like this:

Code: Select all

13.5KV ---  surge prot --- modem --- CPU --- UPS --- power line
                 |                             |         |     
                gnd                           gnd      gnd

Granted, I should have connected the CPU's casing directly to ground - that would have helped (that's done now), and the UPS's ground connection didn't help because it only connected the casing, which was isolated (famous double internal isolation stuff).