UPS

[doodab]

I'm getting a shiny new dualit for my birthday

[Sysman]

Does the cost/benefit make sense? If you're spending (say) £250 that's of the order 5 hours' work. Assuming you're not going to loose saved data how much work is being able to power down safely going to save you - unless you work all day without saving in which case more fool you

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

[Sysman]

Don't laptops have batteries?

Yes but external disks and monitors don't.

[Sysman]

I think he knocked his box over at the same time. That could knacker a spinning drive anyway. I've never seen a power outage physically break a drive, not saying it doesn't happen but I'm at a loss to see how it could.

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

[Sysman]

Yes, I know that it cause corruption of the data on the disk and need to restore your backups, but you can use the the same disk cos it still physically works. I've had that happen too. But I'm talking about it physically knackering the disk so it's not reusable. Unless it's actually moved or dropped while the heads are unparked or the power outage inherently causes a head crash or there is a surge that fries the electronics I can't see how a power outage physically destroys a hard disk.

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.

[Sysman]

Actually got the fabric fairly cheaply, it's the SATA disks that are killing me, around £250 for a seccy-hand 2TB dual-port.

Last time I bought disks that pricy they actually had a lifetime guarantee.

[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

[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]

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.

[Sysman]

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

You've obviously got your priorities right.