A friend of mine emailed me over the weekend to tell me that she’d had a power outage at her house while working on her desktop computer. The computer was plugged into a surge protector, but since surge protectors don’t provide any power except what comes out of the wall, the computer shut off immediately. I’m sure you’ve had this happen to you on occasion and it’s at least annoying. In her case, when the power came back on, she powered up her computer and found that it had gone stupid.
Windows wants to be shut down correctly. Most of the time if it’s not shut down properly it will come back up after it goes through some internal gyrations and cleans up what was left lying around when the lights went out. In my friend’s case, the mess remained and her computer display was missing things like desktop icons, the startup button, etc.
To make a long story short, she eventually got it working again by pressing various F-keys during startup (she isn’t sure which ones) and as of that evening was back up and running. I suggested that she might want to think about purchasing an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to replace her surge protector. Had she been using a UPS, she could have avoided the whole issue.
If you’re not familiar with UPS’s, their job is to provide a battery backup so if the power stops flowing out of the wall socket, the battery takes over and gives you enough time to finish what you’re doing, or at least save your work, and then shut down the machine correctly. I’ve used UPS’ for years and I’ve lost count of the number of times they’ve saved me a huge headache, not to mention potential damage to my machine and/or data.
Back in the day, a UPS cost a couple thousand dollars and was only seen attached to business critical computers. Today, you’re looking at an investment of about 60 bucks for a UPS that will give you 15-20 minutes of run time on the battery, depending on the number of devices plugged into it. Any small business can easily afford to protect their hardware and data. In my opinion, they can’t afford not to!
The APC Back-UPS ES 8 Outlet 550VA is my favorite for a typical home or home business computer system. It’s big enough to power a desktop computer and monitor plus an external hard drive and even your modem and/or router long enough to save your work and shut down cleanly. You won’t be cursing the darkness, or even the momentary power glitch that drops power just long enough to shut your computer off. It’s got 8 outlets all of which are surge protected. 4 of them are battery-backed, as well. Obviously, you plug your computer, monitor and external drive(s) into the battery-backed outlets. The printer and other non-essentials go in the surge-only outlets.
The first time your power goes out, you’ll probably save your $60 investment just in time and aggravation alone. If it keeps you from losing data, or worst case, damage to your machine, so much the better. Abrupt power outages can have all kinds of negative effects on your computer hardware, not to mention the data contained in it, so in my mind it’s worth spending a few bucks to avoid that possibility.
If you use a laptop computer and the internal battery is in good shape, you don’t need a UPS for your computer, but you may want to consider a small UPS to keep your modem and/or router running during the blackout. If you’re using a desktop computer, it’s a must-have. Next time we’ll talk about how to back up your data properly so that if a power outage does cause you to lose data or damages your machine, you’ll be able to recover with a minimum of hassle.
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Jeannette Paladino says
June 9, 2011 at 12:19 amThanks, John, for the good advice. I think I have a UPS but it’s buried under the desk so I need to crawl under and check. I have a Mac – what’s your experience with Macs?
John says
June 9, 2011 at 11:23 amHi, Jeannette,
When you dig out that UPS, make sure the battery is still good. I find I have to replace mine every year or two if they’re in constant use. It pays to test the battery every month or so. There should be a test button on the UPS for that purpose.
As for a Mac, despite the Mac vs. PC religious wars, in the context of a UPS they’re both hardware and subject to potential damage from electrical irregularities. A simple power outage isn’t so bad, but if the power goes on and off in rapid succession as sometimes happens, it can be very hard on the computer’s power supply.
How they each recover software-wise is a function of their respective operating systems. Both are pretty good at recovering from unexpected shutdowns, but neither is perfect so it’s best to avoid the problem where possible.
Julie says
June 9, 2011 at 10:03 amHey John. Thanks for the helpful info and here’s another question. What happens when the computer is in sleep-mode and there’s an outage that goes well-beyond the 15 minute grace period that the device you described provides.
Also, I didn’t realize that only some of the outlets are backed up with the battery until you mentioned it. So I crawled under my dusty desk (yuk) and saw that my desktop was not being protected by the battery. You saved me from another headache again. Thanks!
John says
June 9, 2011 at 11:31 amHey, Julie, the simple answer to your question is that the sleep mode will probably make it a little easier for the machine to recover when it’s started back up. The problem still remains for the hardware as I mentioned in my reply to Jeannette’s comment above. Sleep mode won’t help with that. 🙂
One positive thing about sleep mode is that the low power consumption in that mode will extend the battery life considerably. The battery life is a function of the power draw of the equipment connected to it, so if there’s less power being consumed, the battery will last longer which may be long enough to survive the outage.
Think of it in terms of the time your car will run starting with a full tank of gas. It will take a lot longer to run out of gas if it’s idling than if it’s being driven at 70MPH.
Cindy Caldwell says
June 9, 2011 at 2:48 pmThanks John! Great info to know. That’s something to think seriously about (and quickly) as we are entering the monsoon season here in AZ.
Cindy