Last night into today, large portions of the Midwestern United States into the North Eastern portion had bad ice storms. While lately I have been taking to turning of all but my most silent system during the night, last night I left my computers off for quite some time to protect them from the storm.
While I have not directly attributed any technologies faults to power surges, I am now quite scared about ice storms. As such now any time massive ice storms are predicted I take extra precautions with my systems.
Why? Two years ago we had the worst ice storm I have ever seen, which caused my place to lose power for nearly exactly 24 hours. While power outages do not worry me much, as in my experience when ever there is a power outage, it for the most part seems like someone flips a switch for the entire neighbourhood. With the ice storm two years ago though, there was a loud humming as my lights flickered on and off ( If my memory serves me right the lights even got far brighter then they normally would be). All I can figure out is while rain and snow melt and run off, ice builds up and then causes a giant arch which is a giant power surge.
Now every time ice storms are predicted, I power down all non essential electronics which includes my crunching machines. This storm had me extra worried as the last thing I wanted to do was fry my brand new computer by simply trying to earn a few extra points!
So asking the readers besides the typical surge protector, what do you do to protect your machines? Do you power down for all major storms? Or just some subset of them?
Adam, I have always used un-interruptable power supplies (UPS) to protect my computers. They offer greater protection from the temporary fluctuations that come during storms. While a good power strip will protect from surges, during a storm there may be power drop-outs which can also damage your high performance system.
ReplyDeleteThe UPS also gives you a few minutes of power to save your work and shut down the system if the power goes out completely.
Some of them can be connected to your computer to send a shutdown signal to the OS if you're not there. I've never tried to use that feature in Linux (the CD that comes with the UPS will have the software and usually it's written for Windows).
The prices vary based on battery capacity. Bigger batter = longer run until shutdown. Usually $50-$90 is enough capacity for 10-20 minutes of power.