All our homes are filled with electrical appliances and with the stormy weather, it helps to take some precautions to keep them safe.
During the storm last week, we experienced a power surge and then power cut. Most of my computers, television, laptops were connected to the wall outlets in a safe manner, except mine (of course..!). My computer crashed and I got to see the blue screen (hard disk failure) after ages! Immediately, we got to unplug the other devices to keep them safe. After a few hours, we tried to plug them back on and it seems like during the power surge, my hard disk got fried – unable to bring it back up.
What could have prevented it?
All I had to do was to connect the computers, television, laptops, phones, tablets, lights through a power surge protection strip and not connect them directly to the wall outlets. Using any of the strips like the ones below would help keep the appliances safe during a power surge/fluctuation and sudden power cuts.
Power surge protection strip – Type 1:
The above white power strip needs to be connected to the wall outlet and multiple appliances / electrical equipment can be connected to the power slots above. The red switch can be switched on/off to start/switch off the power to the devices.
Power surge protection strip – Type 2:
The black power strip shown above additionally has slots to charge phones/tablets using an USB drive. There are 4 USB powering slots seen in the above picture.
Power surge protection strip – Type 3:
The third power strip model has 6 outlets and 2 USB charging slots, and can be connected to the wall outlet itself (does not take additional space). Usually these are useful if we have a charging station at home and do not need a long extension chord to connect to devices that are far away. Look for surge protection tags on these outlets.
Multi-device charging wall outlet – Sample below
This one has 3 charging outlets and can be directly connected to the wall outlets. This is not a power surge protection strip. There is no RED on/off switch nor does it say surge protector on it. This would not work to protect your devices during a power outage.
Most of these power surge protection strips cost anywhere between $10 – $30. Well worth the cost if you are looking to prevent issues and save your devices and the data stored in the devices.
On a side note, it is worth it to check if your data backups are working fine on your computers.
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