Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Battery Backup - Get One
Stoic Joker:
Florida where I live is called (but is actually 3rd) the lightning capitol of the world. That being said we took a damn near direct hit about an hour ago ... My wife's treadmill is fried. I had to reconfigure the BIOS on my $2,000 main comp to redefine the RAID array to get it to boot. However it did boot. The battery backup took the brunt of the hit and still survived.
My $4,000 Server is also still running just fine ... Its battery backup however is fried. I can afford (sort of) a new battery backup ... but there is no way in hell I could replace the server right now.
Mind you it is not my intention to brag about the cost/value of my equipment, I'm sure a lot of folks here understand the need to invest in ones career ... and have even better stuff. I'm simply trying to show "the numbers" payoff for an investment I made years ago in making sure that surge protection was taken seriously.
If you've ever thought of buying a battery backup some day, make it today. It is worth it.
bob99:
The battery backup took the brunt of the hit and still survived.
--- End quote ---
I would still be cautious about trusting this one too much. There is a good chance that while it didn't fry, the protection and filtering circuit that took the hit has been weakened. And you may not be as lucky on even a smaller storm. I had one one that protected my system. But then afterward I started hearing it beep and switch over for short times (few seconds at a time) for what seemed to be no reason. Sunny days without a cloud in the sky. It started seeing and reacting to the transients in the AC that it had been filtering out before. There are devices that can monitor and provide counts of AC transients on the line. It is amazing on the number that can occur over time and how high they can be. They are only milliseconds in duration but do weaken power supplies, UPS and other sensitive devices.
Stoic Joker:
The battery backup took the brunt of the hit and still survived.
--- End quote ---
I would still be cautious about trusting this one too much. There is a good chance that while it didn't fry, the protection and filtering circuit that took the hit has been weakened.-bob99 (June 06, 2009, 01:23 PM)
--- End quote ---
True, I'll be keeping an eye on it for a while but it seems to checkout ok for now. The toasted one on the server however has adopted much the same behavior you described (battery went to Zero & it beeps occasionally). Sure it'll power up...but it's a gonner. (Crack-the-whip effect: Last device on the circuit takes the biggest "hit")
Interesting side note: The server's battery backup is plugged into one of those cheap-O "Surge Strips" ... The breaker in the strip never tripped.
bob99:
The toasted one on the server however has adopted much the same behavior you described (battery went to Zero & it beeps occasionally). Sure it'll power up...but it's a gonner.
--- End quote ---
On mine even the battery still worked fine. It just stared kicking in/out more frequently. I went to a seminar once, by coincidence hosted by a mfg located in FL, that discussed lightning versus AC powere transients. One of the things that came out of it was constant power transients can be just as damaging as a lightning event. I've seen it on equipment I provide. In some areas even where they haven't had any recent storms they still lose equipment due to the transients.
Interesting side note: The server's battery backup is plugged into one of those cheap-O "Surge Strips" ... The breaker in the strip never tripped.
--- End quote ---
This was one of the things that was brought up during the seminar. The type of protection circuit in the strips is also weakened over time with hits as well as transients. And over time the protection portion of the strip just won't do anything anymore. People think if the light on the strip is working so is the protection. Not the case. All they have is a power strip and false sense of security/protection. Sounds like what may have happened in your case. It went straight through the strip and into the battery back-up.
westom:
What is this protection and filtering? Where are the numbers for this?
Noted was how properly sized protectors fail - they degrade. Any protector damaged by a surge provided no protection, violated absolute maximum specs from the manufacturer, and is how to get the naive to buy more such protectors at exaggerated costs.
Effective protection means you never even knew the surge existed. Still some believe these outright lies that a protector will somehow stop what three miles of sky could not. That a few hundred joules in a power strip will absorb surges of hundreds of thousands of joules. Some are so easily lied to as to believe protectors are sacrificial devices.
Any informed resident in FL knows what is essential for and what provides surge protection:
http://members.aol.com/gfretwell/ufer.jpg
Either a surge is harmlessly absorbed before entering the building. Or it will find paths to earth destructively through an appliance. The scam is to grossly undersize a protector so that its failure light reports failure. That gets the naïve to recommend more of them. Then claim that magic box will block what three miles of sky could not stop. Nothing stops a surge. And surge damage is routinely averted by techniques well proven even 100 years ago. Effective protection means a protector earths a direct lightning strike, the surge does not enter the building, and the protector remains functional.
That surge hit the server and UPS simultaneously and equally. Protection already exists inside all electronics (ie that server). But a surge too small to overwhem protection in the server easily destroyed a grossly undersized UPS protector circuit. No problem. If that UPS is purchased using myths, then the damage gets the naive to buy more ineffective protectors. Effectively earthed protector is even necessary to protect UPSes that have virtually zero protection. Enough to claim a subjective 'surge protection' in color glossy sales brochures. But virtually zero protection.
If honest in that seminar, far more important than a summary conclusions were numbers and what those numbers represent. If selling a scam on junk science, then numberrs are not provided - just like the zero protection inside that battery backup device. If they did not provide numbers, then what scam was being promoted? Those who want to be scammed even think filtering will stop what three miles of sky could not – set themselves up to be scammed.
So what were they selling in that seminar?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version