Question for A+ experts

[eXTREME2002]

Hey - I have this important question about Harddisks. recently i have got some bad luck coz electric power was down in many times i was working on the PC so...

1. What are the bad effects of power down on the HDD (e.g. can it cause a bad sector on it based on the assumption that when the power is down suddenlt, the Harddisk read/write head may collide with the surface of the disk itself due to its inertia?)

2.What are the bad effects on the OS (i use windows XP Pro)

3. Is there anybad effect on the rest of the important hardware (e.g. MotherBoard, CPU, RAM..etc)

Thank u for reading and aspiring for an answers soon as this issue worries me so much and i can't figure out what damages could hit me as a result of power down(other than data loss)

[Winphuk]

I don't think I'm an expert but...
Don't worry too much about power outages. Keep a surge protector or UPS. When it happens, run scandisk and fix any errors that may happen and you'll be okay.
When your using an NTFS file system, you have something called the Master File Table which keeps a permant copy of the file system so that in case of a power outage, it brings the configuration back up the exact same was before it was cut off. (without missing a beat)
Powering off your computer without proper shutdown is never recommended but the amount of damage to your OS if your using Windows NT,2000, or XP is substantially less than it would be for Win95/98.
When you shut computer down properly, your OS is saving all the settings and configuration, so you don't lose any data and retain errors on your hard drive. It also allows for the advanced power management to shut down your components in the right order as do prevent any hardware damage.

[hawkburn]

Originally posted by Winphuk
I don't think I'm an expert but...
Don't worry too much about power outages. Keep a surge protector or UPS. When it happens, run scandisk and fix any errors that may happen and you'll be okay.
When your using an NTFS file system, you have something called the Master File Table which keeps a permant copy of the file system so that in case of a power outage, it brings the configuration back up the exact same was before it was cut off. (without missing a beat)
Powering off your computer without proper shutdown is never recommended but the amount of damage to your OS if your using Windows NT,2000, or XP is substantially less than it would be for Win95/98.
When you shut computer down properly, your OS is saving all the settings and configuration, so you don't lose any data and retain errors on your hard drive. It also allows for the advanced power management to shut down your components in the right order as do prevent any hardware damage.

Yep, that bout sums it up. I've found the only way to make bad sectors on the HDD is to reformat it using the Windows program or "f disk"