Prevent external hardrive damage from blue screens or power cuts

Question

I've recently been thinking about getting an external hard drive in order to backup all the stuff that I have, as well as having extra room for some more.

Naturally security is an important concern for a backup device, and I've recently been experimenting BSODs every now and then, could this be harmful for the drive? And if so, how to protect against it?

On a separate but related note, I've thought on getting a UPS to prevent power cuts from damaging it, and I'm thinking on buying a hard drive with power connector (rather than powering through the USB port like most 2.5 inch ones do). This way I could only plug the hard drive rather than the whole computer in the UPS. Would this be appropriate though? Or would the computer turning off be a possible threat even if the hard drive is safely turned off? I'm saying this because an UPS capable of handling an entire computer would naturally be more expensive.

Any tips to strengthen the security will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Power surges are the risk point

A UPS will help you prevent surge damage as well as giving the ability to have the UPS shutdown the machine if a power outage occurs. You would need a smart UPS in this case.

You could also get a PDU with surge protection to prevent from a higher risk issue, power surges. You can plug all your devices into that PDU and simply use the USB to power the drive as it's all coming from a single shared power source.