Uninterruptable power supply for a Mini and a Drobo

[akm3]

I would like to put my Mac Mini and (theoretical) Drobo with 4 750gig Hard Drives on a battery backup.

How do I figure out how big of a battery backup do I need? I figure if it can run on battery power for ~30 minutes, that should cover the vast majority of brown outs and power outages. Is that unrealistic?

Does anyone have any experience with UPS units and where to educate myself?

 

[akm3]

Can we bump here?

 

[Googon]

Wow that is a bit excessive for hard drive space. Do you think you'll use that much? And some power outages can last up to days, as well as a few hours. Although, most of them happen at night.

If I knew the speed of the hard drives I could give a better answer, this question is a hard one to answer as it is >.<!

 

[Darth.Titan]

The biggest advantage to a UPS isn't being able to use the computer until the power comes back. Your primary benefits are:
1) Quick flickers in the power don't shut down the machine
2) During more significant blackouts, you have time to properly save your work and shut everything down. Even if you're not home the UPS should come with software that will shut the machine down automatically if the power goes out.

As to which model to buy, I say spend as much as you can afford. I went to Costco and bought the most expensive one they had at the time. (about $130) It is an APC (can't remember exact model) that I have connected my Mac Pro, 30" Cinema display, Time Machine drive, and Drobo (4-1TB) to the battery-powered outlets, and a power strip to one of the surge protected outlets for everything else. According to the software I can run the computer for about twenty minutes on battery, but like I said I'm only interested in keeping things up long enough to finish up and shut down.

For a mini you could probably make do with much less, but overkill never hurts IMO

 

[Le Big Mac]

APC has a run-time calculator. You put in the power consumption of your various items and it will tell you how much run time each of the UPS units will give you. I would imagine hard drives wouldn't need a huge unit--the power suck is usually monitors.

 

[akm3]

Wow that is a bit excessive for hard drive space. Do you think you'll use that much? And some power outages can last up to days, as well as a few hours. Although, most of them happen at night.

If I knew the speed of the hard drives I could give a better answer, this question is a hard one to answer as it is >.<!

It's not excessive when you've been meticulously ripping your ginormous DVD collection, as well as RAW photography

Speed isn't my big issue. I don't want 100% uptime, I just want UPS to 'last me through the little ones', and the burps that occasionally blip power out for just an instant.