Reply to: UPS

[vetran]

Home use - overkill, UPS's are only needed for Business critical servers to allow you to do a safe power down.

speak for yourself.

http://www.aelgroup.co.uk/pdf/wp_powqal.pdf

Its actually worse in private homes as they are less likely to have long runs or large loads that effectively smooth the supply.

I had a reseller who sold to a small firm on a trading estate they shared with a metal fabricator, every time their neighbour turned on the welding or plating equipment the customers PCs crashed. The reseller then sold surge arrestors and UPS units to most of the private houses around to stop the issues being caused by the metal fabricator.

Note the 15% minimum then look at a lot of your older psus which are 220 - 250v (designed for our 240 V nominal) they will be running at 197v on a regular basis so they are much more likely to pop.

with a UPS it will be at 230V +- within say 5%. Spikes & harmonics reduced as well.

[doodab]

Just had a look at the old toaster. One of the metal bits that moves up and down to pop the toast out is bent and shorting out on the heating element. That's cheap crap for you.

[doodab]

I though you'd ordered a new one? Didn't get Next Day delivery with Amazon? tut tut

It's a birthday present from the in laws, they'll bring it down on Sunday.

[Platypus]

The crappy toaster just took me out again.

I though you'd ordered a new one? Didn't get Next Day delivery with Amazon? tut tut

[doodab]

The crappy toaster just took me out again.

[doodab]

I've seen critical servers get damaged with a power outage. Whether it holds family photos, supports a WFH business or something larger is irrelevant. If it's important, a UPS is not overkill.

I'm not going to lose any significant data unless something fries my SSD, my data drive, both of my backup drives and the copy of the family photos on the external drive at my parents house

It's more the minor irritation of losing a few minutes work that irked me and set me thinking. In this case excel had autosaved my invoice so it wasn't actually lost but on some occasions in the past I've had VMs get corrupted and refuse to boot which required rebuilding. That was before I became backup obsessed though, these days I'd lose a day's work at most and as I only work 4 or 6 hours a day on a good day it's not actually that much of a big deal.

[doodab]

The time that most server grade disks fail is when powering 'em back up, in my experience. That doesn't have to be a power cut, but when you do a proper shutdown and switch off as part of a hardware upgrade etc., some of them might not come back.

I suspect that's cos that's the only time they ever spin down and back up again. That seems to be bad for consumer grade drives as well.

[Platypus]

Home use - overkill, UPS's are only needed for Business critical servers to allow you to do a safe power down.

I've seen critical servers get damaged with a power outage. Whether it holds family photos, supports a WFH business or something larger is irrelevant. If it's important, a UPS is not overkill.

[Contreras]

You've obviously got your priorities right.

But with a UPS he could still have toast during a power outage.

[CloudWalker]

Home use - overkill, UPS's are only needed for Business critical servers to allow you to do a safe power down.

[vetran]

You've obviously got your priorities right.

no his servers are toast

[Sysman]

That's why I'm better off with a new toaster than a UPS

You've obviously got your priorities right.

[doodab]

Isn't there a device specifically designed to protect you against surges? It certainly rings a bell although the name eludes me.

I have literally everything in the office plugged into two 8 way surge protectors. I guess if they didn't work I'd be in trouble though.

[d000hg]

It's more a matter of Other Bad Stuff That Happens* when you lose power**

* e.g. frying your RAID controller
** and when power comes back again in a surge like fashion

Isn't there a device specifically designed to protect you against surges? It certainly rings a bell although the name eludes me.

[doodab]

I've seen a badly behaved UPS take out a £3K disk controller.

That's why I'm better off with a new toaster than a UPS