Gotta love redundancy

[Lionheart]

I just upgraded my desktop hard drives. I had two 250 GB drives with only 50 GB free space between them (I keep my photos and the office photos backed up on the second drive). So I cloned the old drives to two brand new 400 GB drives, and added two 300 GB drives in addition for extra storage and backup. I cloned the boot drive to one of the 300 GB drives for added safety, and am re-burning my old cd and dvd photo backups to insure data integrity. Guess what happened to my new (4 days old) 400 GB boot drive? zzzzt-clik-clik-zzzzt-clik. Absolutely the most horrific sound you can get out of a computer- a hard drive going down in flames. Fortunately I have two boot drive backups-the old 250 and the newly cloned 300, and I just switched boot drives in the bios settings and back in business in just a minute or two. I sent back the defective 400, and am waiting for its replacement (this week I hope). Gotta love redundancy-I hate losing data and having down time on my pc's.

[Peter_AUS]

And a good example on why not to delete anything until you are up and running for more than 5 minutes. At least you can be reasonably assured, that if it is going to fail, it usually does within a very short period of time, in my 15 years of building computers, personally and for sale.

I hope you have a good internal power supply on your computer and a good UPS that it is connected to as well. All important things to think about.

[Lionheart]

Aspire as520 520 watt powersupply
APC Smart-UPS 500W UPS
I take no chances, heh heh. I've learned the hard way.

[Asylum Steve]

Are you sure that's enough for your entire system? I've got a great PC guy in town, and one of the best pieces of advice he game me was not only to have MORE USP than you (think you) need, but to split my desktop system onto two units.

Now I have a brand new APC 750 to add to my older 500. Of course, I run two monitors, have three printers, (plus scanner, router, modem) and also keep my phone/fax system on surge-backup...

Still, relatively inexpensive insurance...

Aspire as520 520 watt powersupply
APC Smart-UPS 500W UPS
I take no chances, heh heh. I've learned the hard way.

[Peter_AUS]

Really Steve, you only need enough backup power to keep you monitor and computer on, long enough to save work and shut down if there is a power failure. Sure more than you need is good, but keep the computer and monitor on one supply and the rest on the other. Maybe keep the modem on the computer and monitor side as well.

Yes it is a good idea to have more than one, but in the average home side of things, one is enough. If the printer stops printing, during a job, so what, restart the printer. Why waste the valuable power of the UPS to continue printing when other aspects of your computer system might be jeperdised instead.

But in an office situation, then that is a different kettle of fish isn't it. Still each to their own.

[Lionheart]

Really Steve, you only need enough backup power to keep you monitor and computer on, long enough to save work and shut down if there is a power failure. Sure more than you need is good, but keep the computer and monitor on one supply and the rest on the other. Maybe keep the modem on the computer and monitor side as well.

Yes it is a good idea to have more than one, but in the average home side of things, one is enough. If the printer stops printing, during a job, so what, restart the printer. Why waste the valuable power of the UPS to continue printing when other aspects of your computer system might be jeperdised instead.

But in an office situation, then that is a different kettle of fish isn't it. Still each to their own.

Well, in the office we actually use 500's as well (we've got 34 in the office). That's where I got mine. I just nabbed an exra UPS for myself and had it DAC'd from my share of the office. We only need enough power after a rolling blackout to finish our progress notes and clinical notes and shut down. The coordinators have beefier UPS since they usually have several accounts open simultaneously and need a few more minutes for closing down. We've only had it happen twice in the last 5 years, and we probably didn't need more than 2 minutes in the operatories to finish our notes. Just so you know, we're a paperless office, all our charts are digital, x-rays, photos....At home I really only use the UPS as a surge protector, but it's good to know I have the ability to save my work and shut down. I've never lost data from a blackout since I've never been working on my pc when a blackout hit (unless video games count as work) at home, but twice at work it's happened. The main server at work has a pretty hefty UPS, not sure what but our net administrator made sure its beefier than what the coordinators have.

[Asylum Steve]

Really Steve, you only need enough backup power to keep you monitor and computer on

Well, not sure what brand and type you use, Peter, but my APC serves two purposes: surge protection as well as UPS backup, and they are both equally important. Being in the lighting capital of the US, ALL my electronic equipment needs to have surge protection. I can't chance the damage.

All the outlets on my units are surge protected, but only half are UPS.

Obviously, I don't have things like printers or scanners on back-up. The only equipment I have on UPS is my PC, my two monitors, my modem, router, and phone/fax. These are all devices I need to keep running (even if it's just for a short time) in the event of power failure.

My point was that one 500w unit with only three UPS outlets is not enough for my system...

[Peter_AUS]

Fair comment. Most only have that amount of UPS connections.

I actually have an APC Backups RS 800 myself. It gives out a supposed 540w but I get nowhere near that amount of requirement for my machine. I did find that for me, below this unit the equipment just wasn't enough for my computer system and the units kept failing. Fortunately for me, the company kept upgrading the units until I was satisified at no extra charge (thank God, it was like 2 1/2 the original cost on the machine I had purchased). And has been breezing along (touch wood) for the past 2 years happily. Probably need to look at the condition of the battery in the next 12 months though.