Do I really need a UPS?
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@mark said in Do I really need a UPS?:
A power outage during a critical system write can play havoc on your system.
Risk vs. Reward. Your call.
Yeah, I know. The worst thing that can happen is that it crashes the hard drive and makes it unbootable, right?
I can restore it in about 3 hours. I get it that professionals can't afford that kind of downtime. I can.
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When I say 'lost motherboard', the PC was completely unusable. The HDD wasn't damaged, but it fried something on the main board.
Proud supporter of Plan 2525. Everything you think, do and say will be in the pill you took today.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Do I really need a UPS?:
When I say 'lost motherboard', the PC was completely unusable. The HDD wasn't damaged, but it fried something on the main board.
Wouldn't a surge protector accomplish the same thing?
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
You don't necessarily need a UPS, but wouldn't be a bad idea to at least have a surge protector. Another step up is a voltage regulator and something that smooths out "noisy" power sources. Surge protection aside, I am not familiar with consumer electronics that offer those two other functions independently, but good UPS units typically have all those built in.
I have a setup where I have a laser printer hooked up to the same circuit as a desktop/server computer along with a UPS. Every time I "wake" the laser printer up, it draws enough power that it would trigger the UPS. In that case, the UPS protects my desktop/server from the transient power irregularities caused by the laser printer waking up, and avoid a needless restart for the desktop/server machine. (And yes, @mark , I use CyberPower units for the more important stuff; though I still have older/smaller APC units in service as well.)
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You need power conditioning and very good ($$$) power conditioning to prevent that. Lightning is very hard to stop and very expensive. Most good UPS have better power conditioning than a typical "surge protector". A surge usually occurs when something in the power chain unexpectedly puts excessive load on the power supply.
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@George-K said in Do I really need a UPS?:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Do I really need a UPS?:
When I say 'lost motherboard', the PC was completely unusable. The HDD wasn't damaged, but it fried something on the main board.
Wouldn't a surge protector accomplish the same thing?
We had surge protectors on both PC's, based on that theory. I wasn't convinced they'd done what they were supposed to do. It's possible it wasn't a surge, but I figure for the sake of $100, what the heck.
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results
(We use Cyberpower UPS's)
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Do I really need a UPS?:
When I say 'lost motherboard', the PC was completely unusable. The HDD wasn't damaged, but it fried something on the main board.
Buy a Mac, bitch.
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@jon-nyc said in Do I really need a UPS?:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Do I really need a UPS?:
When I say 'lost motherboard', the PC was completely unusable. The HDD wasn't damaged, but it fried something on the main board.
Buy a Mac, bitch.
That's like telling somebody who was raped by a priest to join the scientologists.
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All that has been said on this is irrelevant.
When buying anything, look for the most colored, blinking lights. Lots of LED's that blink with importance. Steady blue with a nearby blinking yellow, plus a handful of green, just ooze importance. Nothing is more dissatisfying than a computer gadget with only one, or no, lights. It's like disappointment in a box.
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He's a Mac user. They prefer the flashing lights to be in the non-visible spectrum.
