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Do you have a UPS? If you do, how many times has it saved your equipment? What was the scenario? (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) by akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My BX750MI-GR has saved my precious data on two occasions. Earlier this year, my seven year old, well used waffle iron shorted, popping loudly and sparking quite brightly in the process, probably because of all the gunk that had accumulated inside its less cleanable interior over the years. That not only made my breaker trip, but also blew the 16 amp main fuse. The UPS kicked in immediately, making a klick and a beep, which felt amazing. That was my first time ever.

As for the second time, see this post.

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[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 8 minutes ago

I'm fortunate enough to live in a region with an extremely stable powergrid.

But it makes a loud clack when switching to battery power which I witnessed once over the last three years. Presumably just some power fluctuations that exceeded a certain threshold (since power worked fine afterwards and it immediately went back to being powered by mains) but that could already be enough to shut down my server.

Either way, I like to believe it has saved my data once and the purchase was worth it.

[–] stickly@lemmy.world 1 points 14 minutes ago

Me with 4 HDDs spinning during a brownout:

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 8 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Its a bit of a "prove a negative" kind of situation no? You can't know if the UPS saved anything if you dont have a control.

Complete tangent, but those small UPS's can often be easily converted into an inverter for a car. Replace the battery with a cigarette plug, and you can plug it in to your car and get 240/120AC in your car. You might need to kill the buzzer, but otherwise its a pretty easy mod.

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Dang, if I ever get trapped somewhere, I hope you're in there with me and that you brought your swiss army knife.

[–] CameronDev@programming.dev 3 points 50 minutes ago

Can't bring it anywhere, UPS is too heavy :D

[–] boydster@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

It's saved my uptime probably dozens of times

Edit: is saved my hardware from damage probably zero times though

[–] violentfart@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Not having a UPS is like running through a cornfield with your junk hanging out.

There’s a chance a leaf or stalk will catch you just right and give you a gnarly paper cut on your genitals.

Why risk it?

[–] biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 39 minutes ago

Nothing would've prepared me for that beautiful analogy

[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 1 points 42 minutes ago* (last edited 40 minutes ago)

Most computer hardware won't be damaged by a power cut. The power comes back and you have to reboot and you might have lost some pending disk writes or unsaved editing, but the equipment comes back fine.

I mostly use a laptop for daily computing so it has a built-in UPS of sorts (i.e. the laptop's battery) anyway. That has been handy in keeping it running through a bunch of unexpected power cuts, mostly accidental unplugging, but a few times when the power actually went out at home.

I have a portable power station that can act as a UPS but I haven't had occasion to actually use it that way. Most of my stuff is actually on remote servers so it's up to the data center to keep the servers powered.

[–] LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 2 hours ago

Yes, 0 times. It has kept the power going through brown outs and stuff, so there is that.

Also, I try to always use surge protectors at least on valuable equipment. The UPS is flair. :3

[–] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

My god, perhaps once a week. I live in an area with shitty grid service, so because of my UPS I have uptime on my servers measured in hundreds of days

[–] spankysalmon@fedinsfw.app 1 points 55 minutes ago* (last edited 54 minutes ago)

I've been saved by ZFS 100x more than my UPSs. Not the least of which because the shitty Bluetti I bought to try to do it on the cheap keeps saying there's an AC short randomly over night (roughly once every month) even though all attached equipment should be well within its power limits even at their max.

[–] Zomg@piefed.world 2 points 1 hour ago

I use an ecoflow UPS power station and it's served its purpose well. It hooks up to home assistant and if power levels go below a certain percentage iHA sends shutdown requests over ssh to my Nas and server.

[–] lntl@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 hour ago

I had one maybe 6-7 years back. Power went out once and I went to my PC which was in the middle of a job and shut it down gracefully.

Nowadays, I raw dog it and structure the jobs I run to be idempotent.

[–] neidu4@piefed.social 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Yes and never. I haven't even had a power outage yet, but it did keep my stack running while I rolled the rack over to use a different outlet.

My setup is a bit overkill...

[–] MuttMutt@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

I have a couple. Have they saved me from anything... other than power outages no. Just installed a really nice one. 10KW (2 units) to start with and will be expanding it when I can afford another 6000 to get two more. I've already had some short power outages and kept the whole house running without issue. https://enphase.com/store/storage/gen3/iq-battery-5p. Once they quit I have about 10 minutes of power for my server, 90 minutes for my router, wifi, switches, ont, and cellular backup.

[–] postnataldrip@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I don't have any cool stories like yours but last time we had a power outage I probably wouldn't have noticed if I didn't have HA set to notify me. That's mostly due to the house setup (solar inverter and batteries) but we do also have a couple of cheap, dumb UPS units which keep the ONT and one of the APs online, which for house layout reasons aren't on backup power otherwise.

That said the power where I am is a bit dirty - before we had the inverter put in we had some really nasty brownouts that I'm amazed didn't immediately kill anything. So it's entirely possible that the backup power has saved something from a premature end.

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 3 points 2 hours ago

I have one at my parents summer house. I think the answer is 0, but I'm not sure because I think before I bought it some equipment did break and since then not anymore. But it's already so old that the battery practically doesn't hold any electricity anymore (it's over 10 years old), and things still don't break.