“Ultimate” Surge Protector with Solar Cells

Question

I've had an idea that I was wondering if it would be possible.

I came up with this idea when thinking about local computer backups. Companies such as IoSafe make hard drives which are water & fireproof, however I'd be willing to bet that a good electrical surge would take one out.

Would it be possible to isolate a hard drive (or SSD), electricially, simply using solar cells for power and fiber optic for communications?

You'd have a light source which would power up the solar cells, which would power the HDD/SSD. You'd have a fiber optic connection for data.

In theory it would be very isolated from outside elements.

Does such a device exist? Is there a reason why not?

Answer 1

While I'm certain there are less drastic ways to provide surge protection, I'll focus on the solar issue - solar power is very inefficient. The best of panels struggle for 20% efficiency. Light generation is inefficient also - even LEDs have a theoretical maximum of 40% or so. That means that to use your SSD that needs 2W of power, you'll need to dump in ~26W into the light source. Given that power consumption is a major issue for data centers, this would be a non-starter.