There was a power outage at my house last weekend. Three of my computers are on UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) systems. Two of them survived the blackout.
\n
\nBy doing the math, you can determine that one of the computers on the UPS, my new iMac in fact, went dark as soon as the lights did. That’s because UPSs can go bad.<\/p>\n
I’ve been using UPSs on my computers for just about ever. I bought my first UPS back in the late 1980s. Back then I lost a hard drive due to a power outage. I thought: Never again.<\/p>\n
The key to using a UPS is to be quick. If you’re around when the power goes out, then you simply turn off or shut down the computers. As long as you don’t plug in everything<\/em> (I recommend only the console and monitor), the system should be alive for at least a few minutes, just to turn things off.<\/p>\n As the UPS gets older, the amount of time it can keep your computers alive diminishes. I remember one UPS I owned back in the 1990s. I thought it was doing great, and it was huge, but when the power went out, my PC lasted only about 10 seconds before poof<\/em>.<\/p>\n During last weekend’s blackout, the iMac went off right away. I remember staring at the UPS, which still had its power light on, muttering, “Curse you!”<\/p>\n The other two computers immediately started the shutdown process, which is how I have them configured: A USB cable connects the PCs to the UPS. In the computers’ power management configuration, I have things set up so that the system shuts down after a minute of being battery-powered.<\/p>\n The obvious question is then how do you know that your UPS is still working and not merely an extra power brick through which you connect your computer to the wall?<\/p>\n I can tell you from my experience that the little lights or LED screen don’t help much.<\/p>\n The UPS systems I bought were on the order of two years old. That appears to be the proper time to retire the things. To make that time-line stick, I’ve used a Sharpie and labeled the purchase date on my new UPS. Hopefully, if I don’t turn completely daft over the next few months, I’ll remember to check that date and get a new UPS when the time comes.<\/p>\n The bottom line is, of course, to protect your computer investment. Fortunately, I didn’t lose anything on the iMac. But I would have been happier had the power failure occurred and the iMac, like the two PCs, would have peacefully shut itself down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was a power outage at my house last weekend. Three of my computers are on UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) systems. Two of them survived the blackout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2289"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2297,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2289\/revisions\/2297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}