UPS - important?

[It's Not Lupus]

How important is having UPS? Have you ever lost any equipment from a power outage?

I have surge protectors, but I don't think that's enough.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Very important. It's very hard on computer equipment to go down hard. It's not only hard on the actual hardware but the software too. Risk of corruption etc... Even a cheap UPS that will only run for 5 minutes will do, and may even get you through most power outages. Have it set to shut down your computer automatically or be ready to do it manually.

I have a UPS that runs for 4ish hours and I get an alert on my phone and at work then get another alert if voltage starts to get too low so I can VPN in and start to shut stuff down. It's very rare an outage lasts that long though so I've only had to do it once.

You don't need to go all out though, a simple $100 UPS from a local store will do.

 

[Blain]

How important is having UPS? Have you ever lost any equipment from a power outage?

I have surge protectors, but I don't think that's enough.

I use CyberPower AVR UPS units on my cable modem & home phone, my PC's, my LED TV, DVR and Amazon Fire TV.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Depends on how often a power outage happens. Here they are extremely rare, I don't know any home users that use a ups.

If you use a notebook you don't need a ups either.

 

[Blain]

Depends on how often a power outage happens. Here they are extremely rare, I don't know any home users that use a ups.

AVR UPS cover spikes, blackouts and brownouts.

 

[rituraj]

+1 Red Squirrel

I have a very old desktop (HP OEM, pentium dual core, bought in 2007) at home that has a UPS, but my sister never turns it off when there is a power outage and lets it shut down after the charge ends. Also power cuts are very common here. But never have I seen any data corruption or hardware failure. Occasionally I get the message like "check the disk for errors" or something while restarting after a sudden shut down, but always skipped that part. The original motherboard went bad after some lizards made their home/lavatory inside the case, but not because of power failure I guess.

Depends on how often a power outage happens. Here they are extremely rare, I don't know any home users that use a ups.

The scene in my country is that every home user buys a UPS AFAIK, like it's a mandatory purchase. But yeah, the scene in US or Europe is way different. But the peace of mind is important. And since thee is very rare occasions of power cuts, I think it's even more important for the OP because of the dependency on "always on" devices if he uses any.

Back in my place, something like a NAS is pointless, as one has to buy a freaking DC generator for that.

 

[owensdj]

You have surges and sags during the day that you never notice. This puts wear on your power supply. You'll find that your PSUs will last much longer if you have a UPS.

 

[It's Not Lupus]

How often do you have to replace the batteries or entire UPS units?

 

[ViviTheMage]

How often do you have to replace the batteries or entire UPS units?

My APC 1500 has had the same battery for about 3 years now, stlil holds a solid 30~ minute charge for my 500~ watts of equipment. It tests every month, and emails me if it's 50%~ capacity. It's actually this (got mine for $100 at staples though): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16842101419

I have a windows 7 box running a raid 5 with 6 RE4 drives, so I wanted to have something nice incase of a power outage. I also have a BBU on the raid card, but to be safe it's hooked to the master plug on the APC. I have the APC setup to gracefully shut down my windows 7 server to save the raid if the power is still out and the battery only has 10% capacity left.... so far so good.

 

[imagoon]

How often do you have to replace the batteries or entire UPS units?

My Cyberpowers ran for just under 5 years on the original batteries. I then bought new ones from an alarm shop since they are commonly used there and rebuilt the "packs". I upgraded to 4 8ah units and it works fine. When these fail ill just do it again as long as the UPS electronics continue to work.

Link for reference only, not a recommendation:

http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Replac.../dp/B00BUL9HDE

You can normally find them for around $20. Each unit uses 4 of them.

 

[Red Squirrel]

For replacement batteries you can usually find 3rd party ones much cheaper. The APC ones are basically "3rd party" with their sticker over it. In fact depending on where you buy your batteries it may even be the same brand APC uses. They're all made in China, does not really matter how much you spend.

 

[Compman55]

About 3 yrs of good battery life then up until 5 yrs it starts to get short. After 5 yrs the batterys are about shot.

If you buy original batterys, the cost of the replacements are equal to a whole new UPS. If you buy aftermarket batteries they end up being about 25% of the cost of the entire ups.

With the use of a SSD that does not have power loss protection, you need a ups without question.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You have surges and sags during the day that you never notice. This puts wear on your power supply. You'll find that your PSUs will last much longer if you have a UPS.

Yep, sometimes there are very short power outages that last less than a second, short enough that some things may not even have been affected like some clocks or even an air conditioner that is running. But these spikes WILL affect a computer or other sensitive electronics. You want a UPS in order to get past those.

If run time is not important you can also get away with the same battery for quite a long time and it will at least protect you against the short outages.

 

[Humpy]

I've never used a UPS in 20 some years of having a home computer. Probably 5 or so power outages of various lengths per year. Anecdotal: Never had an issue other than some data loss. Without specifics, I don't really believe that computer hardware is more susceptible to damage from a power outage than other electronics. I don't recall seeing a UPS listed as a requirement for any hardware I've purchased.

Of course, at work we use them to prevent data loss while waiting for the generators to start up.

 

[Blain]

I don't recall seeing a UPS listed as a requirement for any hardware I've purchased.

My home is paid off, so there is no requirement that I insure it.
I've never had a house fire either, should I drop my insurance?

 

[Imp]

I looked into this a while ago and walked away empty. The battery maintenance and quality of UPS power didn't sit well with me.

There have only been a few power outages over the past decade. I'd say a good 3/4 of the local power outages were caused by some genius, not me, in the house flipping the wrong breaker when another circuit tripped. I'd probably get one if I moved because every other area in the city seems to always lose power.

 

[Humpy]

My home is paid off, so there is no requirement that I insure it.
I've never had a house fire either, should I drop my insurance?

Pretty terrible analogy considering insurance will not do a thing to prevent damage to your home. If you can afford to replace your home out of pocket with no affect on your lifestyle you might consider dropping your insurance.

 

[Martimus]

I just had a power outage a couple days ago, and it fried something in my computer. I had it on a nice isolated power strip, and it still killed it. I didn't get a UPS because I wanted to avoid the constant fan, but I'm starting to look into them now.

Are there any affordable UPSes that are usually quiet?

 

[TemjinGold]

Err the last two UPSes I had (the only two) don't have a fan...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Most small ones wont have a fan, they don't run long enough for overheating to be an issue with a standard battery. If you mod it and add a bigger battery it's advisable to put a fan. though for extended run I prefer using inverter-chargers as they're designed for it. This is the one I use: http://canada.newark.com/tripp-lite...3790402833|plid|&CMP=KNC-G-SKU-OTH-TRIPP-LITE (just a random link I found on google)


Also a single 80mm fan is not what is going to make your room louder. You wont be able to hear it over the sound of the video card fans.

 

[billyb0b]

i find it worth the extra $200 beans to invest in a decent APC UPS to protect my $2000+ dollar desktop, as well as more $$$ for the monitors, cable modem, VoIP adapter, router, and print server

 

[piasabird]

It depends on how often the power goes out or fluctuates in your area. The power company has one of those power generators on a telephone pole behind my house. It is like a giant lightning magnet. I did have a little switch get zapped once because of it, but the computer seemed unaffected. The question is whether the Surge came in through the power line or the Cable line. I was not using DSL or phone modem at the time. Your computer or Router could get zapped through an Ethernet cable as well.

I use one separate surge protector just for my Router so I can shut it off and on separately without affecting my computer power circuits.

If in your area the lights sometimes go a little dim, that is a sign that the power coming into the house is fluctuation. This is bad for computers.

 

[Scarpozzi]

More importantly, turning equipment on and off is damaging. The best way to describe this is when you think about how things expand and contract from heat/cold. This causes the solder joints to flex and eventually fail.

It's rare after gracefully powering down a few hundred systems and powering them back on NOT to have a hard drive failure.

Having a UPS is important to protect surges and shortfalls and condition the power (because a brownout is worse than a blackout)....but computer hardware has moving parts and those are going to typically fail eventually... The non-moving parts are subject to defect from temp fluctuations causing damage in the long-haul.

 

[rsutoratosu]

More importantly, turning equipment on and off is damaging. The best way to describe this is when you think about how things expand and contract from heat/cold. This causes the solder joints to flex and eventually fail.

It's rare after gracefully powering down a few hundred systems and powering them back on NOT to have a hard drive failure.

Having a UPS is important to protect surges and shortfalls and condition the power (because a brownout is worse than a blackout)....but computer hardware has moving parts and those are going to typically fail eventually... The non-moving parts are subject to defect from temp fluctuations causing damage in the long-haul.

This is exactly the reason I have ups.. My whole house is upsed.. Several apc 2200 racks, apc 1500s, backups 650s, even the fish tank

The fios tv box and ext drive are on ups. At one point, the ext drive isn't because the battery failed, I didn't bother to replace the battery and had a few brown outs.. it caused corruption and fios box didn't see the drive after. Had to erase it with all my shows on it

UPS are really for you to save what you're working on and safely power off your devices/computers/etc

 

[Red Squirrel]

More importantly, turning equipment on and off is damaging. The best way to describe this is when you think about how things expand and contract from heat/cold. This causes the solder joints to flex and eventually fail.

It's rare after gracefully powering down a few hundred systems and powering them back on NOT to have a hard drive failure.

Having a UPS is important to protect surges and shortfalls and condition the power (because a brownout is worse than a blackout)....but computer hardware has moving parts and those are going to typically fail eventually... The non-moving parts are subject to defect from temp fluctuations causing damage in the long-haul.

This has been my experience as well. Any time I need to turn down my whole rack, the odds are pretty good something fails when I turn everything back on. Hard shut downs are even more damaging.

My worse failure was several years back before I had my big UPS that could last for several hours. I lost 2 hard drives out of a single raid 5, disk backplane, controller, all in one go. I had managed to get 1 of the failed drives to spin and was able to rebuild with a spare. I did not trust any of the drives anymore so I replaced them all 1 by 1. In fact to this day that server still randomly hiccups where everything freezes for several minutes. I recently built a new VM server so been migrating stuff over.

Eventually I want to setup an even bigger UPS using 48v rectifiers and inverters as well as setup a generator hookup on my house and buy a generator. We don't really get many outages but it's still good to be prepared. All that equipment pays for itself once the first 5+ hour outage happens.