[H-GEN] U.P.S

[Jason Parker-Burlingham]

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Hilton Travis <Hilton at QuarkAV.com> writes:

> On Tue, 2002-09-17 at 07:30, Jason Parker-Burlingham wrote:

> I have seen a full brick house that had the bricks completely blown
> apart in a direct lightning strike.

Well, obviously that's not the sort of disaster under discussion.
This exercise is all about estimating the perceived risk and estimated
cost, and if *that* happens, someone special will be getting the
smoking remains of my computer, because I likely won't be alive to
deal with the problem!

For what it's worth, the house is well over one hundred years old,
probably more like 130.  Niceties like plumbing and electrical wiring
date back to the nineteen-forties and -fifties.

The scale of event I'd like to protect myself against is the sort of
thing I'm a little more used to:  modems blowing, damaged power
supplies, busted equipment.  That sort of thing.  Basically if things
catch on fire, they catch on fire and I don't think there's really
much I can do (although I'll be looking into the sort of thing Alan
Harrison mentioned[1]).

> > It looks as though I'd be better off spending time investing in a
> > decent tape unit, then.
> Always a good choice to have a backup.  Regardless of whether you choose
> a UPS as well.

As is often the case the question is one of money (lack thereof) and
priorities.

At hundreds, not dozens of dollars a pop, I'd rather get the UPS
first, to protect against hardware damage, and put off the tape unit
for a few months.  I'm sure I can find *someone* to cut me a CD of
gpg-encrypted backups if I need to.

Actually I'm also pretty sure that I could simply recreate my
environment from scratch and resign myself to having lost all my
files, too---but I can't replace a computer right now.

Cheers,

jason `Of course APC failed to give any *useful* indication on whether
       or not their products are up to providing what I want'

[1] : Alan, if you need me to say it, I think doing the research would
      be an excellent idea, if not exactly terribly useful for me
      *personally*...
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| ``Ooooaah!                                                            |
|   I'm getting so excited about cheese-making I can't stand it!''      |
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