Does computer losing power cause damage?

Delly10 said:

Thankfully I have Macrium and I backed up my hard drive to an external hard drive. I did that a little over a year ago in case something were to happen.

Might want to do it a "bit" more often.
Generally it's a good idea to make a fresh backup before any major changes or major updates, etc.
Save the original backup, ofc. That's sort of your "factory refresh" backup.


Some of us, get a bit carried away with backups...






But a fresh full OS image backup once a month or so, will keep you in good stead.

Delly10 said:

The reason I haven't done anything further with backing up the operating system is because I backup all my other information (personal files) seperately on a flash drive, and also on a different part of the external hard drive. But if something happened to my OS on my computer, then I'd resort to the external hard drive backup.

One more question: Would downloading the next cumulative update that comes out each month do anything to fix any errors I might have caused in my OS?

Depends on the errors ofc. But probably not.
Keep in mind, I'm NOT saying you HAVE errors. I'm saying that because of the possibility of errors... we have a "proper" shutdown procedure.

The only tools we have for "fixing" errors... IF they occur, are things like sfc /scannow now, DISM and backup software.



Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and sfc /scannow, are commands that can be run (one at a time) from a command prompt run as admin.

These tools ARE for fixing errors.

Delly10 said:

I might do a sfc/scannow scan sometime when I have the time to see if anything shows up. Otherwise I won't be too concerned about it unless the computer starts acting strange.

That's the ticket.

Delly10 said:

The reason I haven't done anything further with backing up the operating system is because I backup all my other information (personal files) seperately on a flash drive, and also on a different part of the external hard drive. But if something happened to my OS on my computer, then I'd resort to the external hard drive backup.

If your system disk fails or your O/S is not recoverable, I take it you're completely happy to spend the time doing a clean install and reconfiguring everything and reinstalling your programs.

Restoring from an image backup is routine- saves you time and the frustration and trying to remember how things were.

I take it you would lose no program licenses, and every single piece of personal data you need is backed up. If you create a disk image and keep it updated, you have a copy of everything. No thought required.

Being able to restore an image when you believe it will resolve an issue saves you asking here for help.

One more question: Would downloading the next cumulative update that comes out each month do anything to fix any errors I might have caused in my OS?

No. Why do you think it might? Updates aren't magic wands.

As to abrupt power off.. imaging your PC is installing a program or moving a large file or updating... that could be interrupted at any point leaving you with a mess.

On one occasion a power glitch corrupted the BIOs in my desktop PC requiring a reflash of the BIOS

Delly10 said:

The reason I haven't done anything further with backing up the operating system is because I backup all my other information (personal files) seperately on a flash drive, and also on a different part of the external hard drive.....

I back up my most important user folders separately too, in my case twice a week (as that is how often I have made significant changes to them).

But if something happened to my OS on my computer, then I'd resort to the external hard drive backup.
One more question: Would downloading the next cumulative update that comes out each month do anything to fix any errors I might have caused in my OS?

First, corruption is very unlikely, as others have already said. I'd also hazard a guess that the most likely files to suffer corruption would be user files that were open at the time, less likely for the OS.

In the unlikely event of the OS being corrupted then no, a CU is not a fix. In fact, I'd think it's more probable that you may have Windows Update errors trying to install the CU if there were indeed any corruptions in the OS. The fix for corrupted OS files is to use SFC /ScanNow and DISM's RestoreHealth option.

Run SFC Command in Windows 10
Use DISM to Repair Windows 10 Image

Personally I make a new Macrium image once a month, so I always have an image updated to the latest CU. I also keep the previous month's image as a fallback. An image from a year ago is going to be missing quite a few updates. At the very least Windows Update will have a CU to install, and probably some others too. And that's not counting the fact that there would likely have been a Feature Update since the image was made.

Reflect Free can also make a Differential image, which is just the changes since the last Full image. Consider making differentials if you are short on space on the external drive. The paid for version can also make Incrementals (all changes since the last Incremental) which can be even smaller.

I agree with the others who have said that improper shutdowns can cause errors [& that you need reliable & current backups].

In addition to the error examples they gave, do note that Windows writes the current session's data to the user profile during the shutdown sequence. If an uncontrolled shutdown interrupts that process, your user profile might be corrupted and might refuse to let you login.

Denis