UPS Information
Why a computer needs UPS protection
If you are reading this page, your computer has a UPS or needs one.
Here are some reasons why:Minor events happen daily as demand on the grid varies and power stations are turned on or a nearby factory starts or stops it's equipment.
Domestic demand can vary also vary greatly especially at peak times and brings the grid under strain or could break it down. An example of this is when too many air conditioners are turned on at once during a heat wave.
The power company's circuit breakers protect your area from events like storms, accidents, lighting or even parts wearing out in the infrastructure by diverting a correct flow to your area and which can cause a short drop and surge in supply.
Rural home owners and people in outlying areas have their own problems with power quality.
Such events can take a blink of the eye but is enough time for your computer to re-set. and you may possibly you may see is the room lights dim and come back.
A Ups will protect from incorrect voltage supply and events to your computer which can slowly damage the integrity of millions of componets, connections, circuitry and other bits and bytes.
Teenagers and other students in have more computer related homework and research to perform on the internet. Small Office or Home Office (SOHO) in a dedicated room or working some days from home or just bringing more work home is becoming common.
We all don't want our internet connection to fail while we are researching with many browser windows open, downloading files, buying online or or sniping for that special that must-have item in the last seconds at ebay.
How much data and hardware can you afford to loose without a UPS?
We all know that if the power goes out you loose any data you haven't saved and this depends on how recently you pressed the save button.
If a black out or other severe electricalevent happens a lot worse can happen
and this includes:
Data Loss and Hard Drives.
The data loss from not saving files during this time is nothing compared to the contents of your hard disk.
The chance of loss is greater if your hard drive is doing an intensive read/write function like copying files, rendering video or even a defrag of your hard drive, a daily virus check or any number of other activities.
Replacing the hard drive is not your greatest expense, data recovery starts at the same price of a few hundred dollars. The price can go up to thousands of dollars save five years of digital family photos.- (This is a true story)
Even then the degree of success of data depends on the damage and sometimes the data is still lost.
What are many years of other files and data too; work files, assignments, MP3 files, bookmarks, address book and far too many other valuable files to mention.
What are your files and data worth to you? Protection is better than cure.
Corruption of Operating System
Windows reads and writes updates to initialization files during normal operation and if a system .ini file is being read or written to and an electrical event causes a re-set that hard disk sector may get corrupted.
Windows may hang on start-up or just refuse at some point and close down keep looping until the power is turned off. You may need technical help to perform system restore (more data loss) to totally re-build the operating system.
This will also mean saving any data that can accessed on your hard drive when connected to another computer or possibly data recovery.
Hardware:
Raid systems with multiple hard drives help along with saving to a hard drive in a docking bay for added data security. The integrity of this still requires protection as even more components are relying on power and an event could damage your docking bay and hard drive/s.
A Raid drive system has two or more hard drives in it and if two are destroyed at once then data loss is still suffered and these drives are reading or writing simultaneously and as a matched pair(or more) from the same manufacturer have the same expected lifespan.
Motherboard loss can happen and some Raid systems require a similar motherboard model to recreate a raid drive system and may be superseded.
Re-creating a Raid system takes many hours to re-create and writing to the drive during that time is not advised.
If you are performing a BIOS upgrade and there is a black out or brown out the motherboard will be damaged and will have to be replaced.
The power supply often blows first but if doesn't then the devices the power supply connect to are subject to loss.
The power supply connects direct to the motherboard which is attached the CPU - Central Processing Unit - (e.g. Intel Pentium) and RAM (Memory) as well sound, video cards and others.
Other wiring goes direct hard drive/s, dvd recorders/players or powers other devices including the front on/off button on your case.
Further damage can occur to devices connected to your PC or powered independently.
External docking bays or external drives usually have their own power supply that is also subject to severe electrical events.
Re-building macs or replacing mac hardware is often more expensive than their PC cousins.
Lightning Surge protection for your PC from power supply or phone line with a UPS
Most models have filters for the phone line to protect your computer and modem from though surges in the phone line .
Lightning goes to ground and a nearby lightning strike can generate a surge pulse of thousands of volts of electricity to the copper underground phone lines.
If this goes to the electronics inside the computer, telephone or modem, the electronics will be destroyed. A power board with surge protection are not a UPS and only offer very limited protection from surges in the power supply and phone lines and unsaved files are lost on a computer.