On Tue, 2022-02-22 at 12:21 -0500, Go Canes wrote:
If it was just erasing the partition table the drive would still be visible using lsblk, and you could re-partition it with fdisk, etc.
I do wonder if the devices were ruined, or just had their data scrambled? Neal didn't say whether he'd tried reformatting the failed ones, I presume he would have, but he just mentioned replacing them.
You mentioned a surge suppressor strip - any chance it has already suppressed a surge in the past? If so, it might not be functioning as a surge suppressor anymore.
Every day your house receives lots of surges. Most you'll never notice. There's not just the times you notice the lights suddenly glowing brighter. There's very fast and large spikes from the continual switching of loads across the grid, and how the stations manage them. Because of this, surge protectors are always working, and will eventually die without you probably being aware of it.
It's worth remembering that a surge protector may not protect your equipment from being wrecked, primarily it should blow a house fuse on a large surge to prevent some equipment catching fire and burning your house down.
If you have noisy mains causing you a problem you want mains filtering, possibly a UPS as well (a constantly running one, like a power conditioner, not a changeover one that supplies raw mains until it kicks in as a backup supply).
For what it's worth, considering my opening paragraph about the mains always has spikes on it all day every day, that's normal. Any equipment that requires external protection has not been built correctly. Anything that plugs directly into the mains should be able to handle what's normally on the mains, for its entire operational life.
The exception I make about that rule is when you want to minimise noise on something that can handle it without damage, but the effect is noticeably annoying and you want to reduce it. But again, the equipment really should have been designed better. Stereo systems, for instance, shouldn't crackle along with mains pops.