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There seems to be an electrical problem at my house. In the last two days, electricity has stoped reaching us twice, the problem was fixed today and everything is back to normal.

But… My computer was asleep when the lights went out.

Will that damage the PC in any significant way?

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    Yes if you had unsaved work when you put it to sleep, it may get lost, other than that no "damage".
    – Moab
    Commented Nov 22, 2019 at 23:13
  • Damage? Depends on if your PC was set to power up after a power failure, and then only if the power stuttered or pulsed when it came back on. Data loss is possible if you left a document open and had not saved it immediately before sending the PC to sleep.
    – K7AAY
    Commented Nov 22, 2019 at 23:34

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Short answer: probably not.

A sleeping computer is drawing power and pulling the power cord could cause corruption of Windows, files, or long term (happening repeatedly) may wreck the storage drive. If in hibernation removing power causes no harm.

Assuming this is a tower/desktop PC? Laptop loosing AC power briefly wouldn’t be harmed as it can rely on it’s battery

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  • "...possibly long term wreck the storage drive". Not in this case. By definition, a sleeping computer would have parked its drive head already (if it even had an HDD), so it actually wouldn't be able to physically damage its drive through a head crash. And if it had an SSD, then there is no head or platters to begin with, so a head crash would be impossible. Losing unsaved work is the main risk but a hard drive is inactive during sleep, so problems related to head crashes won't happen. He would certainly lose whatever was in RAM though.
    – Mr Ethernet
    Commented Nov 22, 2019 at 23:23
  • Yes, It has an SSD for the system and and HHD's for personal files.
    – John F101
    Commented Nov 22, 2019 at 23:46
  • @MrEthernet good point I do remember a sleeping PC should turn off its HDD! However a sleeping computer can be automatically be woken (ex: for updates) turning on it's drive so there's a possibility of issues
    – gregg
    Commented Nov 23, 2019 at 2:18
  • Macs have a feature which allows OS updates to download during sleep; it's called "Power Nap" and is on by default if the Mac has flash storage (in which case there is no drive head to crash anyway) and off by default if it has an HDD. There is no equivalent feature in Windows 10. If the OP had a Mac: a) the OS would need to be on an HDD (it's on an SSD) b) also would need to have overridden the default behavior of no Power Nap for HDDs and c) be unlucky enough for an OS update to be in the middle of downloading at the exact moment the power failed. In this case, his OS was on an SSD anyway.
    – Mr Ethernet
    Commented Nov 23, 2019 at 2:45
  • Drive heads can be parked for different drives independently, as needed. The OP has an HDD for data and an SSD for his OS. Even if, theoretically, an OS update was being downloaded/installed at the moment the power was interrupted, the OS would have been written to his SSD anyway, while the HDD would most likely either be safely parked or at least not be involved in saving the OS update. support.apple.com/en-us/HT204032
    – Mr Ethernet
    Commented Nov 23, 2019 at 2:49
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No.

I use suspend daily and have suspended overnight. I have not ever lost data (in 2 decades of doing this) to an external power failure. Power draw while suspended is minimal and I have more than once suspended overnight and then seen nearly a full charge in the morning (fully charged before suspending).

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    You could still technically lose data that existed only in RAM and not on your hard drive, for example an unsaved Notepad window or anything else without autosave.
    – Mr Ethernet
    Commented Nov 22, 2019 at 23:30
  • That is possible, but I always save everything and close apps before suspending and recommend everyone do this when suspending
    – anon
    Commented Nov 22, 2019 at 23:32
  • @John Yeah, that's exactly what I do.
    – John F101
    Commented Nov 22, 2019 at 23:47
  • Then you will have no problems with data loss since you save everything.
    – anon
    Commented Nov 22, 2019 at 23:50

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