I am well aware of the ‘proper’ way to shutdown a UnitiServe. Storm Ciara delivered 2 power outages to my house on Sunday. After the first, I turned off all the plugs on my Naim, but it did get me thinking…Has anyone experienced problems with UnitiServe shutdowns due to power going off? I haven’t turned it back on yet - I went away on business Monday morning and given the high winds still progressing, I decided to leave it all powered down
Yes, better to let it power off. But it’s recommended to push the front logo a few seconds and let it clicking then powering down. Not unplugging the power cord directly.
The occasional unexpected shutdown won’t cause a problem in itself, although if the US happens to be saving stuff to the hard disc at the moment the power fails, you may have some broken files that it may have to deal with. But as people tend to leave them on for long periods, an unexpected shutdown can reveal an unexpected problem, for example the CMOS battery having failed, or a hard disc that is struggling.
Probably it will be ok, but it might not be…
Best
David
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Perhaps I’ve been lucky, but mine has always recovered from unplanned shutdowns when we’ve had power cuts. There was one notable exception when my first one exploded during a direct lightning strike, but you can’t really blame it for that.
It’s a joke Chris?
No, the lightning strike came through the phone line, through the router, and Airport Extreme, then into the US via the Ethernet cable. They were all destroyed, and the heavy mahogany box they lived in was blown apart. That’s why I now connect my networked gear with fibre instead of copper Ethernet cables.
Whouah ! I didn’t thought this could happen. I thought you were joking and saying that the strike stroke directly the box of the unitserve being near an open window 
So perhaps should I be more careful personally and power all my system off if there are lightning strikes ? When at home I never done that for now, but I live in town.
Our house is high up, and the phone line comes down from above the roof, so is more at risk than most. So when we have an electrical storm, we try to power down the HiFi, servers etc. but also disconnect the phone line and TV aerial as they are all possible routes for a lightning strike.
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VintageMike, I shouldn’t worry, I live in the Far East and Middle East for circa 10 years and I guess we had 20 or more power cuts in that time, the US was fine. The hard disk has failed once, but that is to pretty much be expected, and was not directly after a power cut.
It has been pretty robust.
Paul
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Thanks all, back home and all powered up, no issues
Mike
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Where I live hardly has sudden power cut off. Lightning never happens like @ChrisSU case as my building has preventing system.
I experience some improper shutdowns mostly when unplug the cord but forget to turn of the unit (I leave the unit running almost the time) or when switch off the unit but forget to “turn-off” by the front logo.
For those time when switching on the unit again, it auto recovers itself. I think it works like a Windows computer, using the font logo like using shutdown “hard” button. Some sudden power cutoffs will be no issue but repeating may creat power shocks and damage HDD or other electric components.
One thing strange, my Unitiserve’s adapter is almost the same with Dune B1 HD Player’s adapter.
All Good, when I powered up, it was all working fine.
The last time that happened, it wouldn’t restart. Turned out it was the CMOS battery that had died. A trip to a local Naim dealer, connection to a monitor and keyboard, identified that it should boot fine, but it didn’t. Friendly Naim dealer, removed battery, sent me to a local shop to buy a replacement, popped it back for me and no problems ever since.
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The problem with improper shutdowns isn’t power shocks or damage to components. It is simply that the Unitiserve runs Windows XP and like any computer, if you pull the power while it’s working, you can get some data corruption and end up with many file fragments on the HDD. If the US is in the middle of doing something when it is shut down, you could lose the data it is currently saving to the HDD.
By shutting down with the logo, you are doing a normal orderly computer shutdown where all the different processes get terminated before the machine turns off.
But it’s quite likely that you could shut it down incorrectly many times and not notice any adverse effect, especially if it’s normally on all the time and so isn’t busily doing anything involving writing to the HDD when it suddenly stops.
Best
David
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