Imagine this: On a perfectly sunny afternoon, you are sitting at your computer and working on a very important document. All of a sudden, your computer freezes. So, you shut the computer off and reboot. When you retrieve the file, half of the text is missing and the other half looks like it was written in a language from another galaxy. What happened? Was your system struck by a virus? Probably not.
While problems with computer viruses are common, they are outranked by — are you ready? — power problems. In fact, power problems are 15 times more prevalent than viruses and are the single largest cause of computer downtime and data loss.
Most people know what surge protectors are and use them figuring, “I’m protecting my computer (monitor, printer, etc.) from power surges, so that should be enough.” But it isn’t. There are various types of electrical disturbances that can damage your computer, corrupt or delete data, and even cause your system to freeze or crash. A surge protector can only protect your equipment from some of these power problems. The three most common types of power problems are surges, brownouts and blackouts.
Power Surges — Most common surges are absorbed by the equipment’s power supply. The cause of surges can range from your utility company switching between power sources to an electrical disturbance in your local wiring (often resulting in brownout, followed by surge), or even a lightning strike, which results in a power “spike” that can enter your computer through the power cord, network connection or modem.
For your surge protector to work properly, you must have a well-set-up ground. What surprises many people is that most cheap surge protectors only work until the first big power surge knocks them out. You will not know that they have lost their surge-suppressing ability until the next big surge comes along and damages your computer (and be careful, you can’t always trust that little green “Protected” light that many manufacturers put on their units).
Brownouts — Although we rarely hear about them, brownouts make up about 87% of power problems. Approximately 80% of keyboard lockups can be attributed to brownouts.
Brownouts are periods of low voltage in power (below 103 volts) that can cause lights to dim and equipment to fail. Their cause is fairly simple: an electrical demand greater than supply, whether at the utility company level or in your building or office (such as demand from air conditioners, laser printers, microwaves, etc.).
The symptoms can range from locked-up computers or keyboards, strange network behavior, hardware damage or wear, as well as data loss and corruption. Your computer will react to the brownout before your lights do, so if the voltage drops enough to lock up your keyboard, but not dim the lights, you won’t even know that a brownout occurred.
Blackouts — These are by far the easiest power problems to diagnose. Any temporary (no matter how long in duration) interruption in the flow of electricity will cause a power failure that can result in hardware damage and data loss.
The various causes of blackouts are well known. A sudden shutdown can cause you to lose hours of unsaved work. Hard drives do not take kindly to sudden shutdowns (and neither do most versions of Windows) and can crash. When the power returns, it can bring a surge or spike, and any unprotected system can sustain further damage.
What to do — A surge protector will not protect your equipment from brownouts or blackouts. You need an Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS. A UPS combines surge suppression with instant battery backup. You plug your computer into the UPS and plug the UPS into the electrical outlet. The electricity supplied via the UPS is constantly monitored and filtered, so that if any disruption (brownout or blackout) is detected, the UPS immediately disconnects from your electrical service and provides the power from its battery (available in many sizes).
If your UPS is large enough, you can continue working for some time (on battery power, assuming power has not yet been restored) or save your work and shut the system down in the normal fashion (via Windows shutdown).
When selecting a UPS, be sure to get the proper size for your needs (rated in VA or voltage amps). You should select a unit that can support the load for the time desired. For example, if you want to be able to continue working on your computer for about 15 minutes after the electricity cuts off, you should buy a UPS that has a VA rating that is greater than the total VA of your computer and monitor. Most importantly: do not overload the UPS or it will not function properly.
If you have computers in your office that you leave on 24 hours a day, you can get a UPS that includes software that will save your files and shut the computer down in the event there is no one present in the office during a blackout.
APC and TrippLite are two of the largest UPS and surge suppressor manufacturers and make quality products. Be sure to ask your consultant or salesperson for more information about these systems, as they can save you time, money and, perhaps most importantly, your sanity.
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Ken Chertok is the owner of Technicare Solutions, LLC, a Kirkland-based computer consulting group specializing in helping small firms and solo practitioners to integrate the most cost-effective computer technology into their practices. The firm can be reached at 425-803-2070.
