UPS seems a faff and more clutter. I’ve never used one for my NAS, which is still going after more than 10 years. My usage just doesn’t justify guaranteed continuity. If I go ahead with solar/battery then I’ll investigate having off grid capability as part of the package.
They are less to do with uptime and more to do with data integrity such as lost writes due to outages on write cached file systems. But with modern journaled file systems that is less of an issue (though it’s important to note resiliency is greatly improved by modern file systems in the face of outages but not 100% guaranteed). If data is regularly backed up to cold storage then it becomes less of an issue still.
The UPS in a data centre still don’t provide enough juice for long outages. For that you need a generator. It’s all about the graceful shutdown capability.
If I was having several unplanned short outages a year like some people here, I’d feel different about the value of a UPS. Though, I’d also probably feel different about my desire to continue living there 
So… does anyone have their audio boxes supplied through an electrically latched contactor that stays off until manually reset after a power outage?
Yup
Ex office 2003 IBM branded APC 1500T smart line interactive. 2nd hand 2010 onto 4th battery pack last week 4 -5 years max.
40 mins run with media tv boxs TV switches fibre Ont Wifi router , SuperUniti UnitiServe Daphile PC Audiotechnica . If home easy to do power off correctly, and wait until all back on stable before powering back on.
Having routers ONT on UPS smoothed voltages seemed to give stable connections even on lower connection plans.
Small.750va in office screens PC etc.
Being through Christchurch EQs felt 5000 over several years in the good part of the bad affected coastal zone. Damaged powemains, years for repairs with Constant power flicks drops for years , not much now but still a few per year for part sec even now , saved everything several times.
During the major EQ everything off except Internet devices ekked out 4 days turning UPS on to catch up family as had no mobile service unless drove out of area
Gordon
I’d take it out, we did many years ago. We’ve had several UPS’s spanning a couple of decades and have only had a couple of power cuts in that time but each time a UPS has failed it’s cut the power!
We’ve had similar experiences with our little IT business where the only power related issues with customers have been caused by UPS failures.
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No UPS. If the power goes off Windoze does it’s own thing, and the NASs shut down. They will not then auto-reboot when power is restored; I need to press the button! It’s no big deal.
Can’t say I lose any sleep over it 
I must admit, I’m a little surprised that a very basic UPS is not built into a NAS drive (to similar). Not one that keeps it running, but thinking of a simple small rechargeable battery that should a power cut occur, would kick in and immediately shut down the Operating System in a tidy manner
I’ve got UPS on my NAS as well - if for nothing else than it gives me a bit of protection if there are any power blips.
I did actually have a bunch of drives fail when we had a renovation going on - I would turn the NAS off every morning, but it turned out that if the power to the house was turned off, and then back on again, the NAS would power itself up. Dropping power while it was running killed drives, and I had a bunch of drives fail in a 4 bay array - fortunally a few months apart, so I didn’t lose anything.
To answer my own question… what I was trying to describe is actually a non-latching contactor, which is essentially part of the functionality of an active rcd, so fitting such a device in-line or in place of a wall socket should do the job.
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I bought a UPS long ago when, with overhead wires, an outage was a regular occurrence.
By coincidence, these were replaced short after and I have never taken the UPS out of the box.
With renewables becoming ever more prevalent in the uk and experience of the iberian peninsula earlier this year, maybe time for a rethink and a new battery.
We get a lot of very short power cuts which screw up the NAS’s They are all covered by UPS. Also powers router, switch and a few other things. Have had to replace their batteries once but otherwise work faultless.
When we lived in Jakarta we had UPS’s & regulator on everything. I ran my entire NAIM system on a UPS. Which did help when the house next door was struck by lighting, i presume causing a substantial back feed on our mains and the UPS blew up, thankfully not the hifi. Everything else not conencted to a UPS stopped working.
Back in the UK the UPS’s are not in use.
I’m none the wiser really. Take it out for tidiness and simplicity, or leave it in. Hmm.
Morning Nigel, as you’ve already got a UPS, why not keep it?
The only ongoing cost is the occasional battery replacement, the same brands as the UPS brand uses can be found on www for a few quid.
My untidiness lives out of sight & mind inside a small cabinet with NAS, switch, odds & sods and the BT Hub on top.
How are you getting on with your new Synology ??
Interested to hear because I might be going for a new one - modern/better CPU/RAM etc.. I will stay with Synology but interested why did you change from QNAP ?
Mike, I’m sure you are right, and that’s the decision I’ve made. The UPS also powers our router, fibre ONT and the EE8 Switch. We did have a power blip a while ago, when the UPS kicked it, and while it won’t last for ages and doesn’t shut down the NAS, as least it protects things from the blips.
I’ve done all the file transfers now, and am listening to music happily. I’ve quite surprised myself!! I’ve tidied as best I can, trying to keep Ethernet and mains as separate as possible. I may have another go at some point but for now it seems ok.
As to why Synology, I wrote something about it above. I’ve always found the Qnap somewhat unintuitive, and the Synology seems more user friendly and accessible to an ignoramus such as myself. From an aesthetic point of view, it does look neater with its front cover, so will show the dust less.
The next challenge is mapping it onto the Mac so that I can transfer files. That’s for another day!
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RE: “We did have a power blip a while ago, when the UPS kicked it, and while it won’t last for ages and doesn’t shut down the NAS”
You can config your Synology to shutdown on power failure
Not sure the detail, that was a long while ago, but www. Synology Knowledge Center has the info. You need a USB cable from NAS to UPS and you can set how & when it goes into a safe shutdown.
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Doesn’t your APC UPS support shutdown of your Synology NAS with an attached USB cable? Most do IME.
I now have a new battery for the UPS, so it’s going to be much more reliable. The next step is to connect the new Synology to it and configure safe shutdown. I must be brave and get on with it.
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