Ups

[Architect4122]

Hello everyone,

I am in the market for a UPS. I have two notebooks. A new MBP, and my old XP machine.

I also have an external HDD for my XP machine for back up and important files.

I'm in the market for a dual SATA drive external enclosure with two 750GB drives in it. This drive will be formatted to be used with the Mac, as the Mac will now be my work horse.

Along with this I have a 23" ACD.

I am also thinking of getting a smaller external HDD and using it for time machine when Leopard launches.

So basically I am looking for a good UPS that can run 3 external hard drives and a ACD. I read this Article and the one I would choose that sounded the best, the APC, seemed out of my price range.

Does anyone have any experience with UPS, and do you think it would be a good idea to do this? I don't want to be working off of a HDD and have it shut off and screw up what I was working on. Since both comps are laptops they'll just run off of their own batteries. Electrical outtages, or brown outs don't occur all that much, but they have definately happened at some bad times.

Thanks!


[If you know a better forum to throw this under, please tell me, I really couldn't find one to suit it. Peripherals?]

 

[techlover828]

[If you know a better forum to throw this under, please tell me, I really couldn't find one to suit it. Peripherals?]

ya peripherals whould be better

 

[mkrishnan]

I've recently been reading up also, and I ultimately went with a 1500VA Belkin, which is on its way. The reviews for it were very consistent generally with the 1000VA one that was described in your link. They're inexpensive and relatively solid, but they have short battery life. They're more than fine for you to have time to put the system to sleep (or in my case, also, prevent a shutdown due to power loss when my system is at home already asleep and I'm gone), but they're not practical for actually running for an extended time off of.

I'm going to use mine (it comes this week) for my iMac G5, Icy Dock, bus powered scanner on the iMac, and iBook G4 (mostly just for power cleansing). I wouldn't actually expect to use the scanner or anything off battery backup. Mostly I'd want to either be able to last a fair amount of time asleep or else be able to shutdown in a controlled fashion.

In your system, those HDs for instance use very little power, but the ACD uses comparatively a lot (I think it'd run about 5-8 times as much power as a HD enclosure). So it's going to be the thing that runs your UPS battery down.

What I've heard a lot is that basically, controlled shutdown is a much more reasonable home user goal than zero interruption, because to get decent battery life, you need something like that APC that costs twice as much or more....I'd love to be corrected, though.

 

[CanadaRAM]

I'm sorry, but I say to avoid Belkin UPS's like the plague. I have had 5 out of 5 fail on me in less than a year. They failed such that if there is a momentary power outage (too short to reset any other computer in the office) the Belkins will switch to battery, fail and crash the computer attached to them. Literally, they were worse than nothing, because they caused crashes to whatever was plugged in.

An acquaintance's company had a process control computer plugged into a UPS and it failed (as in, not during a power failure, but an internal failure of the Belkin as above which crashed the computer) and did over a million dollars damage to the materials that were at a critical stage in processing.

He was describing what happened and I asked: "by any chance, was it a Belkin UPS?" and he said "Yeah, how did you know?"

 

[mkrishnan]

Ugh... I've heard some good experiences with them also, I guess we'll see. APC seems to resoundingly get good press, although they're very expensive.

 

[Architect4122]

Ok, well, I tried to post this in peripherals as well, but it was locked soon after.

I wish there was a way to a move a thread instead of start a new one and shut down or remove the one that already has some good responses.

Either way, I guess it'll linger in this room for a while.


I'm still looking, I think if it comes down to it I might as well shell out the $300 or so APC wants. I read the full article I posted and the the prices greatly varied, especially between the APC and Belkin. Initially you would think go cheaper, but then at the same time, with two reputable brand names such as those, you have to think.

 

[mkrishnan]

I just installed my Belkin yesterday, and activated it today (after charging). We'll see. It communicates fine via USB with the iMac. I did a self-test and it passed the self-test powering the iMac (with a USB scanner attached), two powered FW 3.5" drives (Icy Docks), and my iBook. The self test isn't really informative about what kind of uptime you'd get out of it, though, and OS X says it's unable to estimate at this time (presumably because it hasn't seen it run off battery enough).

What's the protocol for getting usable numbers? Is the safest real-world test to trip the circuit breaker for that part of the house? Is that safe to do in terms of testing?