My mom's computer's power supply died, so I replaced it. Fired up the new PSU, and the hard drive lit on fire. It's the exact same wattage, and I made all the same connections. So . . . could the power surge that killed the first PSU have destroyed some voltage regulator or something? Is anything else in the computer salvageable (e.g., RAM, optical drives, the new power supply)?
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I heard a story once of a surge hitting the surge protector and redirecting down the line, and hitting the cable coax, firing up to the cable modem, and then through the Ethernet cords right into the comp towers...
In some cases, electricity is like water, you can dam it up, but it will still find a way.
Sounds like the connectors coming from the motherboard to the hard drive where screwed up. The copper lines that you see on a mother board, they do conduct electricity very well.
I guess I should keep my backup external drive unplugged both from my computer and from the power strip?
Without knowing what caused the problem, there's no telling how many other parts of the computer were also fried.