Quite a lot of people these days are running home servers, or at least a central computer that has a large amount of storage. This can be used as central storage for the large amount of digital content that we are now beginning to collect in the average family, or at the very least used as a backup facility for all the family’s laptops and iPods. One of the main reasons for doing backups of your data, is that we now often have an emotional attachment to a lot of this data. Would you be happy about losing all your digital photographs for instance, or the whole of your music collection? I thought not. So if you are not backing this data up already you really should be !

However if you are backing your data up to a central server, you really need to protect that computer with an UPS device. UPS - stands for Uninterruptible Power Supply. By the way a Server is just a fancy name for a piece of software or hardware that performs some service for other software or computers on a network, if it is hardware it may be doing other things as well.

An Uninterruptible Power Supply is one which continues to supply power during a loss or drop of input power, but will also act as a surge suppressor, filter noise and provide protection against power spikes. All these things are potentially dangerous for a computer system and potentially damaging your hard drive. You may think that in the UK we have a very stable power supply which is largely true, but we still get power cuts once or twice a year as a result of storms, lightening etc. There also drops in current which are also an issue, and which may be caused by everyone in the UK switching the kettle on at half time in the FA cup final, for instance!

So I would recommend anyone with a important computer that holds important data, that they look into a UPS system. They are many available at in a huge range of costs, so do your homework, but something like the APC BACK-UPS CS 350 would be a good place to start for a home user.

So just to recap the benefits of an UPS are;

1. It gives you time to shut down your computer properly.
2. Will take the hit from any lightening strike. much cheaper to replace the UPS.
3. Will maintain the proper voltage, even during power spikes and sags.
4. Gives you “peace of mind”.

Do you use an UPS?