Yes, I looked at replacing the battery on mine but with shipping and the battery, it was almost the same as buying a new UPS.
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Is a UPS really necessary?
- Thread starter sabester24
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Yes, I looked at replacing the battery on mine but with shipping and the battery, it was almost the same as buying a new UPS.
To your first question: "need" is a relative term. A UPS won't do anything significant to protect your hardware, but it WILL help protect your data. A computer which shuts off suddenly (and it doesn't take much of a power blip to cause that) can end up with corrupted drives, not to mention the loss of whatever you were working on at the time.
For me, the cost of the UPS was insignificant relative to the peace of mind I get from having one. I had a pair of drives go bad once during a power drop (again, I'm talking about the data - the hardware was unharmed). I don't want to go through that again.
To your second question: a power blip can be small enough for you not to notice, but your iMac will notice it. An interruption or surge of around 1/8 of a second is very often enough; you might not even notice the lights flicker.
And don't misunderstand the function of a surge protector, it has nothing in common with a UPS. Also, lightning travels through miles of air, which is a pretty good resistor if you think about it; if lightning strikes a line in your area, there's pretty much nothing you could put into a surge protector that will keep the resulting current from jumping a gap and zapping your computer. Surge protectors don't protect from lightning strikes.
You need enough standby energy to power the computer, input devices (keyboard/mouse), monitor (redundant on an iMac), and ALL connected drives, just long enough to save your work and shut the machine down properly. Don't worry about connecting things like printers, speakers, etc.; you just need to do a proper shutdown before the UPS batteries give out. A 500W unit is probably plenty; I bought a 1350W unit, but I have several external drives connected to it.
I've worked in the computer industry for most of my life.
Not having a UPS during a power outage is like pulling the plug out of a computer before it has a chance to safely power down.
Having files open when a computer is powered off can lead to data corruption which may lead to your computer becoming inaccessible by not being able to boot up into the operating system. I've seen this occur many times at work. Each time requiring hours to fix.
Some times it's not able to be fixed as it doesn't tell you which files are corrupted and there are so many system files on the machine. The only other option is backup, and you better hope your backup works.
It's not a matter of IF this will happen to you, without a UPS, it's a matter of WHEN.
Not having a UPS during a power outage is like pulling the plug out of a computer before it has a chance to safely power down.
Having files open when a computer is powered off can lead to data corruption which may lead to your computer becoming inaccessible by not being able to boot up into the operating system. I've seen this occur many times at work. Each time requiring hours to fix.
Some times it's not able to be fixed as it doesn't tell you which files are corrupted and there are so many system files on the machine. The only other option is backup, and you better hope your backup works.
It's not a matter of IF this will happen to you, without a UPS, it's a matter of WHEN.
As someone who administers 1000 linux boxes, dear lord just spend the $100 and get a UPS. It isn't worth the change of file system corruption.
Thanks for all the input everybody. I took the safe road and purchased a UPS. This is what I got http://amzn.com/B000RZPK1W
The one that was recommend earlier in the thread wasn't available at microcenter. This one looked close enough. Does anybody have that specific unit? If so, how's it working out?
The one that was recommend earlier in the thread wasn't available at microcenter. This one looked close enough. Does anybody have that specific unit? If so, how's it working out?
I'd like to add that there seems no need (regarding brown outs, "dirty power" etc.) to buy a UPS in Western Europe. I lived in Germany, Netherlands and France and no-one recommended or used (apart for data security reasons) an UPS. The power grid/infrastructure is better developed and there are very very few unannounced brown/black outs (can't remember one happening in the last years).
It all depends on where you live. An UPS has two basic functions - preserving power in case of power loss and normalising power input (thus protecting the PSU and the components of your computer). I used to live in eastern Europe (a post-soviet country) all my childhood, where power outages occurred every week and the nominal 220V jumped between 170V and 270V on a regular basis. After I moved to western Europe (Germany and now Switzerland), there was only one time that I experienced power loss - when there was an accident on a power substation nearby. I wouldn't even think about getting an UPS here.
This is not the case. An ordinary power supply -- no matter how well-regulated -- is no match for a surge or spike.
It's simply not true that what happens downstream from the power supply depends only on what the power supply can deliver. That's the whole point of protecting against surges -- if it's not protected, the power supply will pass all that power right on through.
It's simple electricity. No mystery and certainly no snake oil beyond the fact that some surge protection companies charge way, way more than what they should . . . check out the audiophile market. But that's another matter.
If you've never been hit with a serious spike or surge, good for you. You've been lucky. I've seen it happen (with and without damage) many times. Often it's been because of lightning strikes, but over on another UPS thread recently I described how a spike/surge from a 30KW generator took out my very expensive UPS, but saved all the equipment downstream from it.
I think if you'd ever seen melted components you might rethink your optimistic view.
"Well-regulated" doesn't imply that what comes in on the AC side is always dealt with. What it means is that the power supply will continue to supply the current and voltage required by the equipment it's powering, regardless of what the internal draw is.
In other words, a poorly-regulated power supply will not "track" its load properly. Let's say that it's doing fine, but all of a sudden two or three disk drives spin up, or all the fans get going . . . and the power supply needs to supply more power suddenly . . . if it's poorly-regulated, it won't. Can't.
But this has absolutely nothing to do with bad stuff coming down the line.
One's internal and the other's external.
Lots of varying opinions. The truth of the matter is that it's very unlikely any damage will be done to an iMac if the power cuts out. Personally, though, I hate the idea of sitting in front of a desktop computer, knowing that all it takes is a slight flicker of power, and my system will reboot.
For ~$100, the peace of mind is well worth it, when it comes to a UPS.
This is the one I just bought, and it's quite excellent:
http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP...660&sr=8-4&keywords=cyberpower+pure+sine+wave
It's completely up to you, but you need to ask yourself if you'd be mad if the power cut out while the computer was writing to some critical system files, and you find yourself having to reinstall the whole OS. Likely? No. But protecting yourself for a little over $100 is hardly a big deal, plus you get excellent voltage regulation, too. You may not see it under normal conditions, but your voltage might vary depending on power... "conditions."
Again, peace of mind is worth it to me. Your call, of course.
Just ordered the same one, since power outs do sporadically occur where I live. Thanks for posting the link!
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Since the OP has purchased their UPS, I'm going to risk taking this thread off-topic with two stories about computers that were fried and where no UPS/Surge protector would have helped.
In the late 1980s I worked for a company that provided hotel frontdesk software. I got to travel to the some of the really nice spots in North America to train hotel staff. One evening I arrived at a client's hotel in Florida. The last couple of firefighters were cleaning up around a blackened tree out front. I went in, and introduced myself to the manager on duty, who informed me that they were closing up for an hour or three and that I was more than welcome to join them in the bar.
It turned out that very shortly before I arrived there had been lightening storm, and bolt had hit the tree out front. Luckily most of it had gone to ground, but a branch of the bolt had shot through the doors, over the shoulder of the person who was coming in at that moment, and had struck the back of the monitor while a desk clerk was using it. The whole computer system had gone black. They didn't know why... and they didn't care. They were going out for drinks. Oh, and the person who had been in the doorway was the manager.
Later, when I had a look at the monitor and the computer insides, I found that the little branch of bolt had gone to one of the screws on the back of the monitor. Inside the monitor was a mess of perfectly good components and completely blackened components. Not melted, and there had been no fire... just chips and things that were perfectly black with no markings. Inside the computer itself were 3 perfectly round holes in the daughter card where chips or what-not had once been.
=====2nd story=====
While I was off in Florida having drinks on the house, one of my co-workers was way up on the BC/Yukon border - Williams Lake or something dismal like that - in the winter. It was -40º and dry as a bone. Part of our jobs when setting up a hotel is to run the cables between the various parts of the installation and then attach the plugs to the wires. So, he had his spool of cable. He grabbed a loose end and walked across the carpeted lobby, pulling the cable behind him, to unspool the length of cable he would need. He gets to the computer and reaches out to put the end of the cable at the back to make sure he wasn't just a little bit short... and zapped the computer with a static charge that sounded worthy of Zeus when he told us the story. Put a blackened hole in the daughter card you could fit a golf ball through. And freaked him out a bit too, eh?
So, I guess to keep this on topic... while a UPS is a good idea, it does not guarantee that you will never have a power spike issue ....
In the late 1980s I worked for a company that provided hotel frontdesk software. I got to travel to the some of the really nice spots in North America to train hotel staff. One evening I arrived at a client's hotel in Florida. The last couple of firefighters were cleaning up around a blackened tree out front. I went in, and introduced myself to the manager on duty, who informed me that they were closing up for an hour or three and that I was more than welcome to join them in the bar.
It turned out that very shortly before I arrived there had been lightening storm, and bolt had hit the tree out front. Luckily most of it had gone to ground, but a branch of the bolt had shot through the doors, over the shoulder of the person who was coming in at that moment, and had struck the back of the monitor while a desk clerk was using it. The whole computer system had gone black. They didn't know why... and they didn't care. They were going out for drinks. Oh, and the person who had been in the doorway was the manager.
Later, when I had a look at the monitor and the computer insides, I found that the little branch of bolt had gone to one of the screws on the back of the monitor. Inside the monitor was a mess of perfectly good components and completely blackened components. Not melted, and there had been no fire... just chips and things that were perfectly black with no markings. Inside the computer itself were 3 perfectly round holes in the daughter card where chips or what-not had once been.
=====2nd story=====
While I was off in Florida having drinks on the house, one of my co-workers was way up on the BC/Yukon border - Williams Lake or something dismal like that - in the winter. It was -40º and dry as a bone. Part of our jobs when setting up a hotel is to run the cables between the various parts of the installation and then attach the plugs to the wires. So, he had his spool of cable. He grabbed a loose end and walked across the carpeted lobby, pulling the cable behind him, to unspool the length of cable he would need. He gets to the computer and reaches out to put the end of the cable at the back to make sure he wasn't just a little bit short... and zapped the computer with a static charge that sounded worthy of Zeus when he told us the story. Put a blackened hole in the daughter card you could fit a golf ball through. And freaked him out a bit too, eh?
So, I guess to keep this on topic... while a UPS is a good idea, it does not guarantee that you will never have a power spike issue ....
sorry for the bad link. but the UPS I brought is
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RZPK1W/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=22085407208&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=19922546811231213018&hvpone=101.97&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_72z7d8i530_b
Can somebody tell me if this is a pure sine UPS? It doesn't say anything on the box...
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That is not a pure sine wave model.
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In general, if it's a pure sine wave UPS, they will make it obvious that it's pure sine wave.
BE VERY CAREFUL with UPSs from Trip-Lite!.
I got this one a couple of years ago: http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtSeriesID=743&txtModelID=3071.
About six months ago I started getting sudden "crash to off" problems on my iMac. No warning, and no rhyme or reason. Sometimes it would crash in the middle of a process, other times when I was in the middle of reading a web page. Sometimes it would magically turn off when I was nowhere near the iMac. Obviously very frustrating and time consuming and lots of work WAS lost.
I did due diligence and looked for sources of the catastrophic failures. I understand that Macs have protections against hardware failures that could potentially brick the machine. I swapped memory cards thinking that was it and removed all external connections (that I could). I examined logs for sources of kernel panic. Nothing worked.
Then it dawned on me: The iMac is behaving like the cord was being unplugged. In fact, this is what was happening! I did a web search of this UPS unit and discovered others had the same problem. Apparently the UPS has its own protection circuits, and this one was a bit flakey. It was "protecting" my Mac by cutting the power. I replaced it with this:
http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP...8&qid=1362252055&sr=1-1&keywords=CP1000AVRLCD
... and now have zero issues.
Moral of the story - if you Mac suddenly loses power, suspect the UPS. Or, as my young son so wittily expressed - the "PS" wasn't being very "U".
YMMV, but (needless to say) I won't be buying Tripp Lite UPS's anymore.
I got this one a couple of years ago: http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtSeriesID=743&txtModelID=3071.
About six months ago I started getting sudden "crash to off" problems on my iMac. No warning, and no rhyme or reason. Sometimes it would crash in the middle of a process, other times when I was in the middle of reading a web page. Sometimes it would magically turn off when I was nowhere near the iMac. Obviously very frustrating and time consuming and lots of work WAS lost.
I did due diligence and looked for sources of the catastrophic failures. I understand that Macs have protections against hardware failures that could potentially brick the machine. I swapped memory cards thinking that was it and removed all external connections (that I could). I examined logs for sources of kernel panic. Nothing worked.
Then it dawned on me: The iMac is behaving like the cord was being unplugged. In fact, this is what was happening! I did a web search of this UPS unit and discovered others had the same problem. Apparently the UPS has its own protection circuits, and this one was a bit flakey. It was "protecting" my Mac by cutting the power. I replaced it with this:
http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP...8&qid=1362252055&sr=1-1&keywords=CP1000AVRLCD
... and now have zero issues.
Moral of the story - if you Mac suddenly loses power, suspect the UPS. Or, as my young son so wittily expressed - the "PS" wasn't being very "U".
YMMV, but (needless to say) I won't be buying Tripp Lite UPS's anymore.
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So what exactly are the differences between this and a full sine?
I was able to get a really good deal on the UPS from microcenter and was hoping it would do the trick.
Pure/true/full I think are the same thing. But don't quote me on that. Which model did you get?
This is the model I got: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000RZPK1W/?tag=macrumors-20&hvadid=22085407208&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=19922546811231213018&hvpone=101.97&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&ref=pd_sl_72z7d8i530_b
What does pure sine even do? What are the differences between having it and not having it?
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That's not a pure sine wave UPS. That's the previous-generation Cyberpower. This is the one you wanted:
http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP...d=1362263735&sr=1-3&keywords=cyberpower+850va
To be reasonably brief, with the new Active PFC power supplies, it's "supposedly" recommended to use a pure sine wave UPS. This only becomes a factor when there is a brown out/black out.
I was using a non-Pure Sine Wave UPS on my 2012/2009 iMac, and when the power would cut out and the UPS kicked in, I'd hear an audible buzzing from the iMac's power supply. This is due to the stepped wave UPS.
You can read about the differences here:
http://www.civicsolar.com/resource/pure-sine-vs-modified-sine-wave-inverters
Now, whether using a non-Pure Sine Wave UPS is hugely important, I don't know. I've had numerous blackouts/brown-outs with my old UPS and never had an issue with my iMacs. That said, I had to buy a new UPS anyway so figured what the heck - and bought a Pure Sine Wave model.
I still tend to think it's a solution looking for a problem to some degree, but with the prices being so similar these days, it made sense just for peace of mind. You can test yourself with the one you ordered - Simulate a black out (either by connecting to a power-strip and switching the power strip off) or by pulling the actual plug out (people don't recommend this, but I've never had an issue, personally). You'll then be able to hear the buzzing from the UPS (normal), and the odd buzzing from the iMac's PSU.
With the Pure Sine Wave UPS, the UPS itself will still buzz when it's in use, but your iMac should not buzz anymore. Mine didn't with the one I linked you to. I would say if you have a LOAD of blackouts/brown-outs, get a Pure Sine Wave for peace of mind. Otherwise, don't give it a second thought.
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A pure/full/true sine wave looks like this:
while a modified/simulated/stepped sine wave looks like this:
It doesn't matter to some loads whether they are fed a true or modified sine wave, while others will do anything from make noise, have odd behavior, to not working at all. Computers are generally on the pickier side of things, and although I've used modified sine UPS's in the past and they worked fine, I now only buy pure sine wave UPS's for all of my computer equipment. That includes my Mac's, routers, and NAS gear.
Whether it's worth it or not to spend your money on pure sine is a decision only you can make.