Advice on UPS Please

FiestaRed

FiestaRed

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Mike
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Looking to buy a UPS to give my system a bit more safety. Until I was advised to get one, I'd never heard of them but I can definitely see the sense in having one.

Can anyone please advise on what to look out for in a UPS and possibly where's the better places to buy them?
 
Not being funny with my comment but you are the first person I have ever come across that is contemplating a UPS in what would otherwise be a domestic PC setup.

Are you sure you need an uninterrupted power supply? What is the nature of the work you would be doing and how precious is it to you in the event that the mains supply suffers an outage?

Like I say I'm not being funny, just trying to understand your situation
 
If you keep all your work backed up - and I mean several backups of ALL important stuff, you are not likely to need a UPS.

You also need to do a backup of your OS in case of disaster - you can do this from the Control Panel and a few DVDs.
 
I recently had a problem where I needed to restore an Acronis True Image backup and the more I've asked about PC problems everyone, mainly on computer forums have said it's important to use a UPS. That's the reason I was asking and I can understand that if the external disk that takes my Acronis full backups had a problem I could be starting back at square one.

All my images are well backed up on a daily basis to an internal HDD and then to two external drives.
 
Assuming that your personal media is backed up properly and you have an image saved of your current operating system on a standalone hard drive not connected to anything then to me you do not need a UPS.

A UPS only really serves to afford a window of opportunity to backup and shut down in the event of a power outage.

If your always backed up and or your work isn't critical then to my mind you don't need one.
I'm happy for someone else to educate me and suggest otherwise though
 
Having a good quality power supply in the PC is probably going to be a better investment than a UPS unless you're expecting regular power cuts. Our latest PCs have good branded PSU's and they ride out spikes/brownouts very well, some of the power fluctuations have triggered the UPS on the main office PC and screens to power off but the PC's have continued to run with the voltage drops.

The main UPS technologies available for home use would be one which switches to battery when the power drops outside of an acceptable level (cheaper) or one which actively controls the voltage and switches to battery once the power completely drops (line interactive, more expensive), then on top of this you'd have to take in to account replacement batteries every 3-5 years. If you run a cheap PSU with a cheap UPS the switch from power to battery could be too slow for the PC to react.

I've done some work with a few UPS companies in their offices and none of them ran their main PC's with UPS systems, only the servers.
 
Thanks for the reply.

As my Acronis system backups are done every other day, it would mean having to disconnect and reconnect the external drive that stores the backups every time a full back up was due. That was the thinking behind UPS so I could leave the drive plugged in all the time.
 
FiestaRed said:
Thanks for the reply.

As my Acronis system backups are done every other day, it would mean having to disconnect and reconnect the external drive that stores the backups every time a full back up was due. That was the thinking behind UPS so I could leave the drive plugged in all the time.
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How does the UPS let you keep the backup drive plugged in.
You can keep a backup drive plugged in without a UPS and it will do its thing when the computer is on.

Maybe I'm missing something here :thinking:
 
stupar said:
How does the UPS let you keep the backup drive plugged in.
You can keep a backup drive plugged in without a UPS and it will do its thing when the computer is on.

Maybe I'm missing something here :thinking:
Click to expand...

Me too I think, sometimes you wish you'd never asked the question in the first place.

I was told it was wrong to leave a back up disk plugged in case there was ever a power surge which could destroy all the data on the disk. That was the reason for "asking" about UPS.
 
FiestaRed said:
Me too I think, sometimes you wish you'd never asked the question in the first place.

I was told it was wrong to leave a back up disk plugged in case there was ever a power surge which could destroy all the data on the disk. That was the reason for "asking" about UPS.
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Ok now its starting to make sense.
You don't necessarily need a UPS for surge protection albeit they do have surge protection built in.

The primary goal of a UPS is in the event of a power outage you are afforded time to backup and power down before the UPS battery dies.

You would maybe be easier investing in a good surge protector.
 
stupar said:
Not being funny with my comment but you are the first person I have ever come across that is contemplating a UPS in what would otherwise be a domestic PC setup.
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I've been using one for years on my server (Dell R710 with dual Xeons, backed by a Compaq 3Kwh UPS), I have another smaller UPS in the lounge which the Freeview recorder and sky+ box are attached to. I do not like having mechanical drives unprotected from power failures.

In addition, earlier this year I had a Tesla Powerwall installed and keep a minimum of approx 4kWh of charge in it at all times against grid failure. So far, in the eleven weeks since installation, it has kicked in three times (15-20 seconds twice and 11 minutes the third time).

All of this in a domestic setting.
 
Thank you for the reply Mark. I was beginning to think I had asked about something rather stupid and no one else in the World ever used an uninterrupted power supply.
 
I have a UPS on my microserver which is also my NAS storage although it runs W10 it sits in my cellar and is on 24/7.
Have had one for many years, consider it critical for allways on NAS type stuff.
Mine is an APC version with my W10 box running powerchute software.
it runs weekly battery tests and tells you how many brown outs (power dips) that have occurred.

they are pretty chepp, so yeah go buy one.
just make sure the one you buy has the capacity to support your power needs, you cannot plug things like laser printers in to them.
 
Thanks for the reply Paul. Really appreciate the help.
 
stupar said:
Not being funny with my comment but you are the first person I have ever come across that is contemplating a UPS in what would otherwise be a domestic PC setup.

Are you sure you need an uninterrupted power supply? What is the nature of the work you would be doing and how precious is it to you in the event that the mains supply suffers an outage?

Like I say I'm not being funny, just trying to understand your situation
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I bought one when we moved out of London in 2006 and found the mains supply was much less stable than I was used to. It has been useful when the local substation failed and other similar problems. I just have my main PC & NAS plus the monitor connected to it so I can shut them down tidily if there is a power cut. Do I really need it? Probably not but, like my multi-layered backups, it's a hangover from 25+ years of Wintel support and server farming.

As Steeps says, they do need regular battery replacements and mine is now on its third. I have seen a UPS with a faulty battery take out a server and that led to me getting a nice little project to spec and install a new rack-full of servers for a district council's library service.
 
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I also have an APC Back-UPS 700G. About ten years ago I had a PC that for some reason was very power sensitive. Every time there was a problem with the mains supply it crashed and the c: drive was screwed up. I used Acronis back-up to another PC on the network and was always able to recover. This took up too much time so I bought an UPS which solved the problems for a while until the PC developed further faults and was otherwise due for replacement. I continued using the UPS though the new PC did not seem to be as touchy. However, I do know that if a break in power should occur in the middle of an important operation, I will not suffer any loss of data. While the battery is only sufficient to supply my PC and my NAS for 5 minutes, it shuts down my PC in an orderly way before this power runs out. In practice almost all outages are for less than 5 mins so I am able to continue using my PC.

It is clear to me that the first PC was particularly power sensitive and it is probable that I could manage without an UPS now but apart from replacing the battery every 6-7 years, I am happy to continue. I had to do a couple of Acronis recoveries last year after a W10 upgrade caused havoc and this took many hours each time. Of course this was entirely a software issue but it reminded what a pain it is to have to recover a system or data. So why not minimise the potential problems.

Dave
 
I live in a rather remote place and have 2-3 power outages per year during stormy weather. Also experience +/- 10% voltage variation since my house is the last on the power line. Therefore UPS is an absolute necessity. I bought a cheap APC and it has been chugging along merrily for the past 10 years without a hitch. I use it for PC, screen and cordless telephone. Cost me something like €120 at the time.
 
I have been using the same APC at work for 16 years, now on its third battery set. The recommendation was battery’s every 5 years, but ours ran 6-7 before the self diagnoses demanded new batterys.

Again this was just on a small server to allow an orderly shut down after 5 minutes of power out, and to reboot automatically when power was restored. The office pc’s were left to their own devices....although a colleague did burst into tears when she was flying through a project and realised she hadn’t saved it for 8 hours when the power cut hit.
 
I use an APC UPS on the server & NAS I use for my network backups, it also powers my network switch and router. It allows an orderly shutdown of the server in the event of power failure & protects the server & network devices against power dips & fluctuations. I intend buying a couple more to protect my CCTV server and power the switches which supply power to my networked CCTV cameras via POE.
 
FiestaRed said:
Me too I think, sometimes you wish you'd never asked the question in the first place.

I was told it was wrong to leave a back up disk plugged in case there was ever a power surge which could destroy all the data on the disk. That was the reason for "asking" about UPS.
Click to expand...
I’d say that a much bigger real life risk is all your backups being on site.

you’d be much better off with a proper (off site) backup solution.
 
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