Let me guess... your hard drive was an Atheist?

Not familiar with the brand.

Yes, just because you have a surge protector does not mean it is safe from surging.

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.

This is scary stuff, and I'm sorry to hear that, Nibiyabi.

I guess I should keep my backup external drive unplugged both from my computer and from the power strip?

I think probably the fatherboard had a bad connection or something, but I could be wrong, I used to work for the Geek Squad

how many jigawatts is the power supply rated for? Is it possible that your hard drive has gone back in time?

My flux capacitor has been acting funny lately. . . .

I have been working with PCs for 20 years, and I have never even heard of a hard drive lighting on fire. Is it possible somebody tampered with it as a bad joke?

Without knowing what caused the problem, there's no telling how many other parts of the computer were also fried.

I suspect you had hidden pics of the Cindy Margolis. Did you know she is the most downloaded woman on the web?!?!

I thought that was Danni Ashe. She is on fire!