My BX750MI-GR has saved my precious data on two occasions. Earlier this year, my seven year old, well used waffle iron shorted, popping loudly and sparking quite brightly in the process, probably because of all the gunk that had accumulated inside its less cleanable interior over the years. That not only made my breaker trip, but also blew the 16 amp main fuse. The UPS kicked in immediately, making a klick and a beep, which felt amazing. That was my first time ever.
As for the second time, see this post.
I have a UPS that I use for my digital clock that runs off of the plug. If it turns off with a power outage the clock it remembers get desynced. Yep, it does not have an externally powered RTC. After plugging it to the UPS I never have to set it again if the clock turns off after an outage.
Is it overkill? Yes. But I go by the idea “any tech I buy MUST keep working until it dies in an unrepairable way”, and that clock is going strong for like 15 years.
Is it overkill? Yes. But I go by the idea “any tech I buy MUST keep working until it dies in an unrepairable way”, and that clock is going strong for like 15 years.
That’s just respecting your hardware. Which I in turn respect.
Used to have one for my work setup
A grand total of zero times. Was not worth it. Cause literally every app has auto save nowadays
Literally today.
We had a 10 minute power outage, first time in years.
Heard it beep, everything connected was fine.Glad I have it even though I replace the batteries more often than we have even a blip.
I used to live in a house with 1800s ceramic wiring in the walls. You bet a.UPS saved my setup more than once. I have 3 now.
Holy crap! I’d LOVE to see a picture of those wirings if it isn’t too much of a hassle for you! I’m fascinated by all things historical and I love to take quick but deep dives into how especially technology has evolved! 😁
Sounds like knob and tube in the walls. Old code terrifies me. Live-front-end switching and the like. There’s a victorian manor house near me that featured on Tom Scott and talked about having to light lamps with a bath of electrified mercury.
I’ve had my current one long enough that it became a fancy surge protector/filter/isolated circuit until I replaced the battery. Made power flickers go from rage inducing to minor annoyance.
The other day, it saved my progress in a game I was playing when the breaker tripped from the toaster oven and freezer cycling on at the same time as me playing a game. Thought the power was out so I quickly saved and exited the game before realizing the other circuit the kitchen doesn’t share with the living room was still powered.
They are nice enough that I’m considering replacing from my own pocket the one my ISP provided with the fiber modem but said they don’t support anymore when its battery died so that my internet doesn’t take a few mins to come back up when it is a power flicker. It feels great to be playing an online game through a power flicker that resets clocks but didn’t even disconnect me from my game.
It’s also nice to not have to worry about the quality of the power coming through the wall since my UPS generates its own AC waves and only uses the input power for the energy, not the phase. That has probably saved me from mystery crashes without me even noticing.
the toaster oven and freezer cycling on at the same time as me playing a game
Gotta avoid those computationally intense areas when you toast 🤣
I had no idea a UPS has all these other benefits, like stabilizing output (voltage levels, I presume?) and working as a surge protector - which in my mind should be slightly different than simply smoothing out the output, since surges can occur over greater ranges?
It does depend on the UPS. Some just connect the output to the input and attach the battery and charger to that circuit, power cuts out and the battery kicks in, replacing the input AC signal.
Others (like the one I have) just attach the charger to the input and then power the battery protected side from the battery all the time (or maybe it’s capacitors or something, I don’t really know the specifics). This produces a clean AC signal free from interference from whatever else is on the circuit (eg ever notice the lights flicker a bit when an appliance cycles on?) as well as outside factors like lightning strikes or grid overload that just slows the frequency instead of going out entirely.
It has normal surge protection but also the isolated circuit means it isn’t even directly electrically connected so surges only make it to the charger.
Before this moment I had never heard of a UPS.
OOPS
Hi. Computer guy here. How many times has a UPS saved me/my clients’ machines? Too many to count- BUT
I do have a story of a UPS absolutely ruining my day if anyone is interested.
I do have a story of a UPS absolutely ruining my day if anyone is interested.
Don’t be a tease. Type out the story!
Okeydoke.
Walk in to my office one day, see the shop lights flickering. Not flashing- pulsing, like someone’s playing with a light switch as fast as they possibly can. “Uhoh, that can’t be good.” During the afternoon, lights flickered repeatedly over and over, in a kind of pulse- like half the waveform disappeared, over and over every maybe 15 minutes or so. I’m no electrician but I think a transformer down the road was in the process of exploding, dropping out a phase maybe?
Each time, our big APC unit with 8x addon battery packs slaved to it- (About 15U worth of rackmount battery packs) the relays cutting to battery and back to AC cycled so fast each time, a professional heavy metal drummer would have been impressed. Horrifying sound to be honest.
After this a handful of times, it happened again and this time, the APC spewed white sparks out the back of the main unit, about 4-5 feet, which meant it was blasting the plaster behind it with sparks bright enough to see them bounce off the wall and roll on the floor. I’ll be honest it looked like welding sparks and the back of the server rack looked like a fireworks show. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this expression before, but I was “shitting purple twinkies”. Full blown panic. Brain couldn’t even compute what I was seeing.
That was the day we lost about $6,000 worth of battery backup for my office’s server rack.
INB4 “But why didn’t you go to the manufacturer for help after?” I did. APC gave us a mind-melting great offer: gigantic discount for the replacement unit, shipped for free (these things come on pallets by the way) but my drooling idiot of a boss decided calling the insurance company and getting an incredible deal from APC for a direct replacement was “too much effort”. Instead he ordered some “normy” 1500’s. We went from ~ 10,000VA of battery backup down to 2,000. Used to be we could stay up/online for hours worth of outage. Now maybe 45 minutes.
At least they’re cheap to replace cells in. Urgh.
Edit: forgot to mention, it spared our gear, none of these insane power events reached their power supplies.
Thanks for sharing
Did you find out what happened to the mains afterwards? Curious about what would cause crazy flickers like those you described.
No, I never did.
Oh, do tell what happened that day?
Replied below :)
Lightning hit the transformer outside my old wartime era apartment complex.
The sound my ups made was like a thousand angry bees.
All of my lights and fuses were blown and the ups battery melted.
But all my equipment plugged into it was fine.
Even UPSs have their ups and downs.
I worked as a Broadcast Manager on cruise ships and UPS banks saved our gear more times than i can count. Shipwide blackouts (and tests) are not fun things to recover from, and UPS banks acted as a buffer countless times.
That is amazing! Were you the one communicating with land/shore and other ships or were you more of a technical adviser? I can imagine your UPSs being HUGE too.
I have UPSs between the wall and every expensive electronic in my house.
I think I have seven or eight now.
You must be surrounded by some real sweet transformer hum 💗
Mine are basically silent.
Sure silent in the audio spectrum but what about RFI? I put ferrite chokes on all the things.
Sic. What brand?
Cyberpower
It’s saved my uptime probably dozens of times
Edit: is saved my hardware from damage probably zero times though
brownouts can stress electronics so they’ll eventually fail
But that is on the order of hundreds of brownouts. There are only specific regions that have regular brownouts. There it is definitely worth it.
Its a bit of a “prove a negative” kind of situation no? You can’t know if the UPS saved anything if you dont have a control.
Complete tangent, but those small UPS’s can often be easily converted into an inverter for a car. Replace the battery with a cigarette plug, and you can plug it in to your car and get 240/120AC in your car. You might need to kill the buzzer, but otherwise its a pretty easy mod.
Dang, if I ever get trapped somewhere, I hope you’re in there with me and that you brought your swiss army knife.
Can’t bring it anywhere, UPS is too heavy :D
They scream at you when they lose wall power. You know that they at least prevented a hard power off when that happens.
Yeah, but no guarantee that the hard power off would have caused data corruption, especially with a relatively idle server, which all of mine are most of the time :/
Let’s be fair, You always have to kill the buzzer. Like, it’s the first option I look for on a UPS. And I have ripped them out of lesser ones. I know the power is out, I don’t need a buzzer/beeper. And I’ve got the thing monitored with automatic shutdowns.
I used to have one and the buzzer scared the shit out of me in the middle of the night when I lost power. Reminds me of the old Avast! Notifications
my lab has oscillating power at some locations, UPS gives stable voltage and we have not had a power supply blow since.
I have two APC550s that are powering my computers only and not the displays or peripherals.
Voltage spikes and brownouts are a constant thing where I live, the variation is enough to play holy hell with the modem and wifi so to save my sanity, every electronic device is attached to something that backs up or cleans up the power.
For the laptops, I have them attached to straight power conditioners (isotel 4s) so at least the adapter blocks won’t get messed up.
Given my main computer is a 2008 MacPro, running an unsupported modern macOS install and the thing’s been running constantly for at least a year now (it’s asleep ATM) I’m not complaining. Same for my gaming PC…
The hardware I have owes me nothing.
Mad respect to you for respecting your hardware.
powering my computers only and not the displays or peripherals.
Same here. :)
Me too! Mostly because mine only has IEC outlets and came with a single female to male IEC cable though, and I still haven’t gotten around to getting an extra one for my main monitor.
I am considering getting one but power outages are pretty much unheard of, so it’s not really a priority. So far it would have saved me 0 times.
Same for me - I think i haven’t experienced more than one blackout per decade in my home town.
Pretty much same here. There was one time where street construction accidentally hit a cable, but considering how rare that is and how error resiliant most filesystems are nowadays, it’s just not worth it getting a UPS.
I was thinking the same thing and would’ve done the same, i.e. not getting one, but then I started to seed torrents and I finally had an excuse to waste more money… I’m so fucking privileged it’s not even funny.
I’m considering it again … at least UPS’ aren’t exploding in price like all the other hardware. And while I didn’t have a power outage in 2 decades, I do have 11 very expensive HDDs spinning.
I do have 11 very expensive HDDs spinning.
I assume they were “grandfathered” into this era of murderous storage prices?
9 of them, yes but I was running low so I had to bite the bullet for the other 2.
And yeah, I paid almost double the price for the exact same model compared to a few years earlier. And the original ones were new … I settled for factory re-certified for the recent ones.
