What damage is done when the laptop unexpectedly shuts off?

Hello

When I was just browsing the web and my low battery message popped up but I usually charge the battery when the 2nd message pops up "Reserve battery level".

I believe this is due to the replacement battery which I bought off ebay 5 months ago since it doesn't last 2 hours now. When I turned the laptop the battery was charging from 1%.

I would like to know what damage has it done since I could say if someone just pulled the A/C plug out and the computer shut off unexpectedly. Would this damage hardware such as mouse or something?

I can only say it is working like it should other than losing the tabs that were opened in chrome

 

the only thing I can think of, is if you had an HDD (not an SSD), a sudden shutdown may lead the read/write head to scratch the magnetic disk. Don't take my word on this, just a guess on what might happen.

 

Thanks, yes the laptop is equipped with a 7200rpm HDD but how would I know if the HDD has been damaged?

 

If you hear any ticking noise from the read/write head while copying large amounts of data, then it's bad and on the verge of dying. If you don't, then you are safe.

 

There is no danger to the hardware when power is pulled, but the software and O/S may develop issues.

A HDD will automatically park the heads when power is removed. An SSD may need to stay powered off and physically unplugged from the AC wall plug for an hour or more if power is suddenly removed. Both are not damaged (physically) by this.

A peripheral like a mouse is also not damaged by a sudden power off.

The O/S (and possibly some Programs) though, depending on what was going on when power was removed, may need repairing and/or a reinstall to perform without glitches. This can be true with a HDD or an SSD...

What can be damaged the most is the battery pack. Especially if you let it sit at 'zero' percent for a long time before charging it again...

Except for the possible damage to the battery, imo, using chrome as your browser is causing more damage than allowing the computer to shut off because the battery was depleted.

In any event, I hope you are backing up your data to at least two other locations on a regular schedule (with one of those locations being 'offsite').

YMMV.

 

As tiller said, hardware problems are very unlikely if you were to suddenly pull power from a computer. You should be more worried about the OS, software, and any pending I/O to disk (some storage drives and OSes will queue data to be written to the disk for a later time).

 

Thanks for the answer guys, Put back my original battery as the ebay battery was acting up a lot and caused the laptop to shut off unexpectedly from different percentage. After unexpected shutdown and when starting up it takes a bit longer than usual but other than that, I guess it is okay

 

Actually it counts on the shutdown. If it dies as if the AC were pulled without a battery then there is no power to park the heads. physically this usually will be the biggest issue other than under the same circumstance a capacitor surplus discharge can happen on the mainboard. This in a rarity can fry other solid state components.

 

I don't think that is true of any semi-modern HDD?

See:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/actParking-c.html

(Just a quick search and the first link I clicked with that info).

 

Yep, emergency off loading the hard drive using the spin down to generate power is pretty old tech now as is using a super capacitor for SSDs. Imagine all those external USB drives brutally unplugged from their systems.

Agree with all @tilleroftheearth says except for chrome, which was probably just a bit of jest.

 

Ya got me.

 

We live and learn each day. My brain is stuck in the stepper era...........

 

Had only one major problem from doing this, and it was not something that has happened since. Screwed up my Windows install so it could not boot into it. Had to find a way to get to the DOS prompt and plug in some commands to fix it. Either way, it was a huge PITA.