I think the moral of the story here is always buy a decent quality PSU (not saying you didn't it's juat that it probably would have been worse with an el cheapo PSU) and use a surge protector. Hell, while you're at it it might be worth buying a small UPS just so you have a few minutes to get everything shut down safely if the power goes out again. Pretty much all UPS's have a built in surge protector as well.

* PSPkiller doesn't use a surge protector or a UPS... Then again I've never had a hard drive failure either so maybe the computing gods like me...