Ups

[NickFitz]

I leave it running and should the power fail in the middle of the night, I wont know about it until the morning. Hence I am not likely to be able to do a controlled shut down in time. During the day I can realistically do with about 5-10 mins max.

A quality UPS will generate a warning signal saying that mains power has gone, which suitably-equipped devices can use so they know to shut themselves down gracefully while there's still time.

Whether your NAS is capable of this, or can be shut down under the control of a computer on the network which understands the signal, is a different question, but it might be worth digging through the documentation to see if it gives you any ideas.

[Mustang]

30 minutes is quite a long time for UPSs (ie: quite a bit expensive) so you just want something that will allow you a controlled shutdown after say 5 minutes.

Thanks for the website.

The problem is with the NAS. I leave it running and should the power fail in the middle of the night, I wont know about it until the morning. Hence I am not likely to be able to do a controlled shut down in time. During the day I can realistically do with about 5-10 mins max.

I guess the issues is perhaps power down the NAS at night.......but that would become a pain.

[EvilWeevil]

Presumably your laptops have batteries? So no need to UPS them and they can just be protected by surge protectors?

30 minutes is quite a long time for UPSs (ie: quite a bit expensive) so you just want something that will allow you a controlled shutdown after say 5 minutes.

I think APC (www.apcc.com) are the market leader. They certainly seem to be everywhere.

[Mustang]

Can anyone recommend a UPS for protecting storage and laptops should the power go out? If not, anyone any thoughts on the situation?

Over the past year we have had 2-3 power outages at varying times. I guess mazx duration has been about 30 mins but the ones in the middle of the night could have been longer.... Hard to know how to spec the UPS with such inpredictability....