Can anyone recommend a good battery backup system?

[stuuke]

Looking for a battery backup. Would need for a monitor, laptop and a couple of hard drives. Any suggestions?

 

[Fleetwood Mac]

You mean a UPS? (Uninterupable Power Supply)

They are available at Future Shop, Best Buy, Radio Shack.. well a lot of places. I don't have a specific one to reccomend to you though.

 

[stuuke]

Yes a UPS. I was told to get a continous power one as opposed to one that senses a power drop and then switches on. The continous is supposed to be better when powering hard drives.

 

[cyberdogl2]

doesn't matter. just go down to one of the stores mentioned above.. and be done with it. there's nothing special about UPS. They're all pretty much the same. The biggest cost are the batteries and capacitors..

 

[Sun Baked]

Yes a UPS. I was told to get a continous power one as opposed to one that senses a power drop and then switches on. The continous is supposed to be better when powering hard drives.

Don't get a UPS that only supplies backup power ... a lot of times they won't switch fast enough, or plain are useless when the power drops low enough (but not off) to shut down the machine.

The ones that offer continuous power are better, since they offer line conditioning helping knock out those pesky under-/over-volt conditions.

The line conditioning UPS systems are more expensive though. The ones that output pure sine power are hideously so, so most get the stepped sine UPS.

Edit:

Look for something with Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) -- or whatever each company calls it. I think most are the same term now.

 

[jsw]

doesn't matter. just go down to one of the stores mentioned above.. and be done with it. there's nothing special about UPS. They're all pretty much the same.

As mentioned by Sun Baked, this is absolutely not the case. However, for under US$100, you can get a decent CyberPower AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulation) UPS. APC is a good brand, but CyberPower ones are, in my experience, just as good but cheaper.

 

[2nyRiggz]

Indeed..APC is good. I had it for over a year without a problem....worth the price.


Bless

 

[disconap]

I'm pretty happy with my Belkin. It has connections for ethernet, USB, Firewire, and phone (surge protection), four battery backed up surge protected outlets, and two regular surge protected outlets. I think I have 3-5 hours depending on how much I run (I ran it down in 2 hours with everything going and a fridge hooked up to kill it faster).

 

[jsw]

The plain UPS's are fine, but the AVRs will save you from under/over voltage, which is insidious and hard to notice as it slowly cooks or starves your systems. I lost some equipment that way and since have used only AVR UPS's. It's well worth the small price differential.

 

[wxboss]

AVRs are prefered as they will continuously deliver a clean signal to all the items connected to the "battery outlets" on your UPS.

I used to have a CyberPower UPS, but it didn't last two years. I went and bought a Belkin 1100VA w/AVR which I love. It has a user replaceable battery, nice monitoring software and is just a better quality than my previous UPS.

At one time, and I don't know if this is still true, but when I bought my UPS through Belkin's site, I put 12345 as the coupon code when checking out and it gave me 50% off the price.