Hi

A few recent power cuts and spikes in London (quite rare in this part of the world, usually) have messed up my WD external drives, and so I am looking into getting an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).

Does anyone have any personal experience of these, and are there any particular brands that are well thought of, or more robust than the others.

I have just a small home office, so the UPS would only have to support my Mac, three external WD drives, two printers and a scanner. Everything is plugged into a power block with surge protection, but that didn't stop my WD RAID system getting *very* unhappy after the last surge/spike. Oh well, only another 7 hours left to rebuild the RAID setup...

Andy

APCs are nice. I've only seen one burn.

I'm using several APC's, no problems.

I'm using several APC's as well. I highly recommend them! Also, they have quite a range of UPS's to choose from, so do your research.

http://www.apcc.com

Thanks everyone! Timely feedback, and a concensus too.

I wasn't aware of APC until today, but it seems they sell their devices here in the UK so they could be the answer to my problem.

Andy

You're unlikely to go wrong with APC, however both Belkin and TrippLite are good brands - I have one of each of these. My TrippLite is over 10 years old, and other than changing batteries twice, its humming along fine.

Make sure you get one with enough power capacity - my 2 cents worth, calculate how much capacity you need, and then double it.

If either of your printers is a laser printer, that might be a problem - they suck up gobs of power for short intervals.

Do not even think of plugging a laser printer into a UPS smaller than your desk.

Try the APC Back-UPS 1500. The 120v version will run 200 watts of equipment for about 40 minutes; 400 watts for about 17 minutes, etc. The run times should be similar for 220v versions. These units are managed by a small Win XP service interfaced via a USB port.

My belkin couldn't deal with fast power transitions. It would eventually get out of sync which unfortunately meant it would be off when it should be on.

Hard drives often fail due to low voltage that causes them to overheat. Inexpensive UPS devices will provide power but not line conditioning to maintain voltage levels throughout the day.

Best to get a UPS that provides power to the computer from the battery all the time and will maintain a normal voltage level. Line conditioners like the Oneac are excellent for areas with frequent power sags and spikes as they consist of fully isolated transformers to filter the power and keep it within a very narrow range.

A UPS will save you a LOT of trouble. Think of it as prevention. Add a good back up system and you have prevention plus recovery. The UPS units are not really all that expensive, and nowhere near as expensive as 100 hours of your time trying to recreate X years of work.

If you have to make a choice between size and quality on the UPS, get the quality. By size I mean how much time you get on battery alone power. Mine is rated for 45 minutes. By quality I mean that it runs the PC on battery all the time and recharges the battery as needed. Quality also means some kind of connection to the PC and a software controller. Today at my home the power flickered on and off four or five times. Not sure why. The lights went on and off, the Mac just kept humming along without any emergency shut-downs or crashes.

APC is the leading consumer brand here in the States.
Hope this helps, but as a serious photographer I do not, ever, want to loose my work and it can happen.


Remember: "Only you can prevent hard disk crashes" and "Bad things happen to good people."

Don't run your printer or scanner off the UPC - a power outage won't effect them at all - worst case scenario you lose a print. However, if you're actively printing/scanning when the power goes out, those will suck so much juice out of your UPC that it will be depleted and die before your computer has enough time to properly shut down.

IF you work on location
some UPS brands work better than others when plugged into a Honda 2000 Generator.
I haven't had any problems with a CyberPower 1500vaLCD unit
while others have reported success with the Belkin brand.