Quote Originally Posted by Curio
No.
What do you mean? Old Hard Disks have no method of returning the auctuator arm to the landing track. When power is cut, the platters spin down and the read write heads will just crash onto the platter destroying the ferrous oxide coating and your data. Then the area becomes unreadable.

Slightly newer ones have a spring attached to the arm which just pulls the arm back to the landing track when the power is off. This is easily identified by a audible metallic clink.

Even newer ones have a charged capacitor and a programme on the circuit board that executes when a sudden loss of power is detected. Power of the capacitor is rerouted to the magentic actuator which quickly moves the heads back to the landing track before the platters stop spinning.

When your OS is performing a critical operation such as system restore which is overwriting critical files, a sudden loss of power may cause file corruption which ends you in having to reinstall the OS.