Safety Dance Protection from blackouts, surges and more

Protecting your computer against disasters (natural orotherwise) requires preparation. But it doesn't take a fire,flood or nuclear war to cause computer meltdown. The most direthreats or fluctuations are power interruptions such as blackouts,brownouts and surges. Whether the power goes out for five secondsor five hours, such fluctuations corrupt data and damage harddrives and other sensitive components. At the very least,recovering from an unexpected power outage can cause significantdowntime. Protection in this case is spelled UPS--anuninterruptable power supply device, which typically resembles acommon multioutlet spike bar or power bar.

The most common type of UPS, standby or off-line,is a battery backup that kicks in automatically when power dropsbelow a certain level. Because there's a momentary,imperceptible flicker in power levels as the UPS switches fromutility to battery power, the best choice for expensive orsensitive equipment running critical applications is anonline UPS device. This eliminates the switchover period bysupplying power from the battery and utility lines simultaneouslyuntil the power fails.

All UPS devices are not created equal, says Dan Rothman, generalmanager of UPS manufacturer Fenton Technologies in Santa Ana,California. "The bigger the VA [volt amps] number, the longerthe run-time. A very large, power-hungry network with severalcomputers will overwhelm a UPS with a small VA. By the same token,a single PC backed up with a high VA will run for a good while onbattery power," Rothman says. To determine the VA level youneed, multiply the voltage (110/120 volts in the U.S.) by the totalnumber of amps your equipment requires.