It was not a bad storm.

It was a simple rainstorm, gentle, not much thunder but it could be heard rumbling in the distance.

As I was working on the PC, I thought..."I need to shut down in a minute..just in case"

That was when a lighting bolt struck the ground between my house and the neighbors.

There was a crack and then a big boom, something popped where I was at, circuit breakers were tripped and then the power went out. It came back a few seconds later and it was then I discovered the damage and started assessing it.

My router was fried, the NAS was gone, my printer was smoking (That was the loud pop) the surge protector was shot, my wifes PC's power supply was fried as well as her network card. My gaming PC was hit just enough to kill the motherboard in a slow week long death spiral before is dies completely. Overall about $2000.00 dollars worth of damage.

I can hear you now..."Wait..your an IT guuy...you should have known better"

Yeah, but like alot of people, I am not made out of money and I had precautions in place but the power and proximity of the strike bulldozed through it. My PC which was on at the time suffered no damage. My wifes PC was off.  There were two printers side by side and only one was destroyed. (Go Figure)

So I have a little better protection in place now, not 100%..but better.

How can I get it to be 100%

Spend money.

If you have vital files and would cry for weeks if they were destroyed then here is a few things you could do.

Buy a Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) and place it between the power source and the surge protector that all your stuff is plugged into.  The surge protector could have a phone line/DSL and network in/out plugs so that those lines are protected as well.

I have DSL and the phone lines I see, in some houses I have visited here, that they are plugged directly from the wall into the router/modem with no interrupter to stop (or slow down) a surge.

Is this fool proof?

No, but it makes it that much harder. Same with Virus Protection...it USUALLY will protect you, but sometimes...something sneaks through.

You can also store your files offline. You can ghost all the drives you have, store that file on an external drive that is stored away (just make sure you update it..otherwise you will lose files when you restore to the last point) There are a number of options.

In my situation, it was too powerful and close. Assessing the damage took a week or so as I used items I found they were not 100% like the motherboard. It started acting funny, ping was off the charts and programs were behaving strange. As I was troubleshooting, it died.

So word to the wise..

if a storm is near, power down.

If it is bad...unplug your electronics

Buy proper and adequate protection for surges and such.

If you have questions..give us a holler.