I personally haven't witnessed any damage to hardware. The ext4 file system, however, can become corrupt if the power loss occurs at an unfortunate moment. I've seen that happen 6-7 times on this year on some 10-s of devices which get their power disconnected every day.
So far I've implemented following software workarounds:
2. Add "fsck.mode=force fsck.repair=yes" to the kernel boot arguments. This will enforce FS checks on every boot and fix any problems found.
I have no evidence on the effectiveness of workaround nr 1, but nr 2 seems to alleviate the problem significantly. I've had no dead devices since.
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Kind regards,
Tarmo Kuuse