apc_cs_350_screen

Protect Your Hardware As Well As Your Data

By on May 6, 2010 in Hardware, News, Windows Home Server

If you’re reading this, it’s a good bet that you’ve invested, or are about to invest, in a home server or other data backup device which is a great step in ensuring your data is protected at all times. But how many of you have taken the extra step to protect your hardware with an uninterruptible power supply?

All of the PCs I have at home are protected with a UPS – a power supply with a battery that kicks in to keep your PC powered on in case of interruptions to your power. Some will even gracefully shut down your devices when the battery is low, which is a lot healthier than just cutting the power supply.

apc 300x237 Protect Your Hardware As Well As Your Data

A UPS is a really sensible accessory for any home server, protecting you from damage to the hardware and ensuring your data is always accessible. The guys over at Automated Home learned a lesson the hard way, after a recent storm resulted in a power outage that killed their home server’s system drive.

Sometimes a power cut or surge will kill your PSU.  However, on this occasion, trying to re-start our Jukebox WHS machine we realised it was the system drive that was toast.  This was the only drive we’d re-used from the old server – perhaps foolishly – a rather elderly IDE drive. We were trying to save all the SATA bays for big data drives and use the IDE line for the boot disk.

Their review of an APC CS350 UPS Protect Your Hardware As Well As Your Data shows that for as little as £60, you can easily protect your hardware via a simple plug and play process.

So gone are the days when a UPS was an expensive luxury or only found in business server rooms.  Now there’s no excuse for not giving your data that extra layer of protection, and giving you peace of mind.  Lets spend those hours and days watching our movies and listening to our music, rather than re-building servers!

More Info: Automated Home


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About Terry Walsh

Terry Walsh is the founding editor and owner of We Got Served. Since February 2007, the site has provided detailed coverage and analysis of the emerging home server category, and has subsequently grown into a trusted outlet for digital home news and reviews.
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  • Paul

    I highly recommend UPS units as they are excellent in cases where electricity can be unreliable (3 mini black outs in 4 days about 30 seconds each).

    They are getting better at plug n’ play with computers (the accompanying software works really well depending on the brand of UPS) and can also be configured or accessed remotely when you are not on location.

  • JAM3Ohio

    I learned my lesson a few years back with a lucky close call. My home had a close proximity lightining strike, which caused a spike in power. I lost the PSU on my main machine and also blew out a router port. I was very lucky to have lost zero data, and invested in a UPS to get surge protection as well as battery backup to gracefully shut down the PC. Today, I run a UPS to protect my EX475, router, modem, switch and DirecTV power source, and I have a UPS for the rear projection TV. Three days after installing the UPS on my server, we had a power loss from a spring storm, and the UPS gracefully shut everything down. No damage, no data loss.

  • http://mykneejerkreaction.wordpress.com/ Gordon

    I believe that if you are going to be serious enough to have a WHS on your infrastructure that you should go far enough to do it right. That means protecting your WHS from itself in the form of a UPS.

  • Dirk

    I can highly recommend the Grid Junction add-in:http://www.homeserverland.com/downloads/m/whsaddi…

  • Anonymouse Coward

    FYI, the CS350 does not have AVR (automatic voltage regulation), though it's a great unit (I have one). The version pictured in this article is NOT the version that most people want (look at the sockets). Most people will want the one with two columns of sockets: battery on one side, surge on the other.

    If you want a good unit with AVR, try the CyberPower 850AVRLCD. It's a good value (around $80 USD and up), provides 510W, and has an LCD display. I have 3 of them.

  • http://www.g2computersolutions.com Gerald

    My company does IT consulting and support and we recommend the WHS product to our clients (dental offices). The package we offer comes with a UPS w/AVR since we require that in order for their service/support to remain in forces. Besides, we've seen a lot of systems go down because they don't have AVR to adjust to power fluctuations.

    Another benefit here is that if you use Grid Junction along with the UPS unit, you can check the reports periodically to see if the unit is being exposed to a lot of power related issues. In some cases, I've found that the building where the office is has a power outage almost nightly due to some maintenance. The doctor was trying to figure out why the systems were experiencing problems each morning, until the report from a UPS system was able to show the power problems that only seemed to happen overnight.