Best UPS for Current iMac?

[HCMarkus]

Fom the SSD White Paper linked to above… this isn't quite as anecdotal as Mr. Halloran's observations:

By creating an automatic failure testing framework, we subjected 15 SSDs from 5 different vendors to more than three thousand fault injection cycles in total. Surprisingly, we find that 13 out of the 15 devices, including the supposedly “enterprise-class” devices, exhibit failure behavior contrary to our expectations. Every failed device lost some amount of data that we would have expected to survive the power fault. Even worse, two of the fifteen devices became massively corrupted, with one no longer registering on the SAS bus at all after 136 fault cycles, and another suffering one third of its blocks becoming inaccessible after merely 8 fault cycles

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https://www.usenix.org/system/files/con ... inal80.pdf

I'm glad you survived Istanbul, Mike, but your data may be at risk.

[yamguitar]

Thank you so much, everyone, for your thoughtful replies. I really, really appreciate it, and all of your opinions were extremely helpful.

I am partially replacing my current machine because a lightning strike fried its ethernet port a few months ago; replacing the port would mean replacing the motherboard, which would be exorbitantly expensive in an iMac of its age. Before I had seen all your responses, I actually wound up buying one of the CyberPower Sinewave units (the 850VA one). I've been running for years without incident with all my studio gear (computer included) plugged into a pair of rack-mounted power conditioners (one Furman, one Rack Rider). I opted to get the UPS not because I'm afraid of losing work during a blackout (I habitually hit the save command every minute or so as I work), but because I'd read that unsafe shutdowns could shorten the life of SSDs, and also to add surge protection to my network cable. $120 seemed like a reasonable investment to protect a $3000 computer; we'll see how well it plays with my studio gear. If it has an adverse effect, I'll probably move it to the router in my wife's office.

...and Mike, I actually almost PM'ed you with my question instead of posting a new topic. I'm very glad you didn't get plugged in Istanbul in front of the Head Turkey.

[mikehalloran]

You can buy enterprise SSDs with a bank of capacitors that will allow it to finish writing data in the event of a power loss. The Samsung 845 Pro is one and it will cost double that of an 850. I have a 1T that I bought from a VAR who had surplus 845s. It works great but I bought on price.

The incident I described happened in 1989. Nowadays there would have been a bunch of cell phones capturing me standing in a cloud of smoke with a bunch of machine guns pointed my way.

[musicman691]

A decent UPS will handle all functions described… UPS, Surge Protection, Voltage Regulation and Lien Conditioning.

Agreed. Been using APC ups's for years and swear by them. I've had them sacrifice themselves and save the equipment connected to them. A $300 UPS saving $3000+ worth of electronics is worth it to me. The current APC I'm using is online all the time and totally regenerates the AC line voltage with a true sine wave output. And that last thing is important no matter what ups you get. Not all generate a true sine wave but a stepped square wave approximating a sine wave. What I have connected to it are the computer and all my external drives. And it's sized at twice what the estimated current draw is for everything.

Oh yeah one more thing - connect a low wattage light bulb to it so that when the power does go out you can at least see what you're doing as you shut down. Beats stubbing your toes (I work barefoot) on consoles and other hardware in the dark.

I would never use a computer that wasn't connected to an ups.