Power cut blew HDD. How to prevent this to new PC?

spannerzone

UPS has several advantages for those in areas where mains supplies mess about, not only do you get time to shutdown a PC but it prevents over/undervoltage issues, surge protection and is ideal if you ever do a BIOS update where a power glitch will probably trash the updating item!

I got the APC ups http://www.ebuyer.com/113906-apc-back-ups-es-400-ac-230v-400va-8-output-connectors-be400-uk and I get about 10 mins run time which is plenty of time to save and shut down work, it also protects other mains powered items (up to 4 are ups protected) AND mains powered external hard drives which can also get blitzed in outages.

Power cuts are rare in built up areas these days but those in the villages often get issues.

Fifer

Gratis wrote: »

Fitting an SSD to a computer will not protect the rest of its workings from the shock of a sudden power outage, will not enable the computer to power itself down safely (closing all open applications in the process), will not keep the monitor(s) going to see what the computer is doing and will not provide one with a light in a pitch-black room at night. A decent UPS will.

There is no reason a "sudden" power outage should harm anything other than a hard drive. Powering down a PC leads (eventually) to the power supply 'suddenly' switching off - it doesn't do so gradually. In which case, you don't need the monitor as the PC isn't doing anything - it's off. As for the light in the pitch-black room at night, I don't see there's any more need for that with a PC in the room than without, so unless you are recommending a UPS for every household for every room they might be in when the power goes, it's not really relevant.

I just think a UPS, in case someone misses the odd episode of Corrie, trips over the cat or loses a draft of their letter to the council, is overkill for most domestic situations.

closed

how is it unusable? what happens when you switch it on?

there is a thread above about how to speed machines up

buy a laptop instead

esuhl

The problem with UPS devices is the battery. From what I've heard most UPS devices only give you a few minutes to shut down. You'd need a pretty big, expensive battery to keep you watching TV and using a PC for a few hours during a power cut, wouldn't you?

And don't the batteries need to be replaced every few years? We had a power cut recently, but the one before that was about 15 years ago. The chances are that I'd have to buy and dispose of several batteries before I ever had to use one.

I back up separately to three drives, so it's unlikely that a power cut would cause corruption on all four drives in succession.

But each to his own; whatever works for you and all that...

ChiefGrasscutter

The 'best ones' are the short term power cuts where the auto-reclosers on the power feed to the village close three times to clear the fault in the hope that it's a stray branch across the H.V line.
So you sit there everything goes off, wait 10 secs or so then it comes on again for a second or so, then off again, then the cycle starts again - and then it goes off permanently...and its off for the next few hours. Goodness knows what sort of impulse surges are coming down the power line during these antics.

Then its out with the paraffin lamps.
Happens regularly probably I'd say once a year, maybe slightly less.
Sometime it is indeed just a short few seconds cut and then it resumes.
Yes I do have a UPS!
It's quite amazing watching the SNR margin on the broadband soar into double figures during a power cut as everybody's else's 'stuff' generating electrical and RF interference on the phone lines vanishes.

spannerzone

esuhl wrote: »

The problem with UPS devices is the battery. From what I've heard most UPS devices only give you a few minutes to shut down. You'd need a pretty big, expensive battery to keep you watching TV and using a PC for a few hours during a power cut, wouldn't you?

And don't the batteries need to be replaced every few years? We had a power cut recently, but the one before that was about 15 years ago. The chances are that I'd have to buy and dispose of several batteries before I ever had to use one.

I back up separately to three drives, so it's unlikely that a power cut would cause corruption on all four drives in succession.

But each to his own; whatever works for you and all that...

Yes you'd need a fairly decent UPS to view a TV but if just wanting to ensure the Sky+ box keeps recording while you're away during power cuts it would help some people.

You might have one power cut every 15 years and I'd agree that you'd get little benefit from a UPS especially as they battery would fail during that time at least once but in my village we got power cuts weekly for 18 months and still get occasional cuts... not to mention when we get 180volts or less for 4 hours or more....I've certainly been grateful on the few occasions where the power cuts and my PC/modem just keep working and I get plenty of time to save and shutdown (or let the PC do it automatically) - for a £60 APC UPS it was a no brainer in my particular case.

So a UPS is probably a bit unnecessary for many people and could be essential for a minority!

I certainly wouldn't be without one (two actually) while living in a village with a rather unreliable supply.

artbaron

Just resurrected this thread to say I bought a UPS yesterday to be on the safe side. We've not had a powercut yet in the new place (3 months) but have had a couple of short brown-outs where certain things switched off and others were OK. Thing is, I seem to have overestimated the power consumption so I now have this monster UPS that would run most of the electrical stuff in the house if it were all connected. I couldn't believe that the computer, which is a new quad-core, 8Gb, 2XSSD, 1Gb Nvidia 640 card only uses 35 watts when idle on the desktop and 95W when under load. Right now my monitor and PC are using 84W combined, which is under 10% load. I switched off the power this morning for 10 minutes to test it and I still had 47 minutes of battery time left. I guess it's better to overestimate than underestimate but I'd advise people to test the power usage of their equipment first so it's well matched to their UPS. Having said that, it's a very impressive piece of kit.

Dave_C_2

Middy wrote: »

My parents had a 7 year old Dell desktop. My mum only used it for downloading CDs onto iTunes to her iPod, e-mail, internet and storing photos. They had the PC plugged into a surge protector.

The proper answer to the OP's question is to buy a laptop as most can easily handle the itunes and photo stuff. However the thread is 2011 vintage so it's in the past.

UPS and SSD may be the way to go if you need big computing power and you have a flaky mains supply.

For me, in the real world of home computing over the last decade or so, my desktop hard drives have all survived the occasional power cuts. OK I've had to repair XP a couple of times both due to software faults rather than power outage.
IMO, the best protection is a good backup.

YMMV

Dave

Basil1234

i had my own my desktop which i built in a server case running twin graphic cards also 4hdds decent processor and ram as well as water cooled got about 20mins off a decent ups, but to be honest evently switched over to lappy which still serve's all my needs also reason for me switching over was missus was fed up of me spending all my time on machine in back bedroom so with having lappy can lay in bed and she is happy watching her crap on telly. anyway i would switch over to a lappy and make sure charger is running thru a surge protector e.g. surges damage machines even with a battery