• I learned last night that we had experienced a powercut while we were away, which explains why so many things were grumbling.

    I've had a UPS on my wishlist for a while.

    Any recommendations?

  • I put a UPS device on my computers. I have an APC one, just a home consumer one. A 1500C I think it is this one https://www.amazon.co.uk/APC-Smart-UPS-SMT-Uninterruptible-Interactive/dp/B003IR1CG8

    Don't spend a wild amount, there are no features you really need... Just a battery and the battery only has a shelf life of 5ish years give or take, it may reach a decade but budget for replacing every 5 years. The only consideration is how much power you need to draw for how long.

    I don't bother with the management software, or usb connection.

    I just use the UPS to get through all temporary drops in power and to protect hardware from surges in power too. It's just a buffer of electricity.

    If the power is out here then my computers will stay powered on for about 15-20 minutes. This being a NAS and 2 PCs and a few PIs.

    With that in mind I focused on how much power can be drawn rather than how long it stays up... A few minutes of uptime is good enough 😁

    I still lose internet as my switch is in another room and not on UPS. But computers are ok with network outage and will reconnect once the switch is back on. I'm merely protecting my computers.

    Not once in 20 years have I lost power for more than 5 minutes, so using a UPS like this is fine.

    If all your devices are SSD perhaps you don't care, but with spinning disks a UPS feels essential.

    With all that in mind... This is a cheap insurance policy against one of the most common reasons hardware is damaged.

  • I forgot to say - thanks for this.

    I'll likely have a small separate one for my desktop, and one for all of my networking / servery type stuff (although I'm running a lot of things from an old laptop now, so have the advantage of an inbuilt battery backup).

About

Avatar for Velocio @Velocio started