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Originally Posted by KillerInstinct
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Your last is confusing. Are you asking, this is the external HDD that I got, what UPS should I get to protect it? It must be from Best Buy?
If so, you're missing some of the points we've been making.
To be reasonably safe, you should protect ALL equipment that's sensitive to power loss or fluctuation with a UPS.
UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) = battery-based backup and surge suppression system, pretty much always includes surge suppression too.
Sensitive gear:
* The actual computer, and
* any external hard drives, and
* any external USB hubs that connect your PC to these drives, and
* any power strips that power your drives.
Not-so sensitive gear, that still should be protected as it's necessary to keep running after a power failure so you can do a 'controlled shutdown' rather than an instant-power-off, (which could result in data loss).
* Monitor
All the above should be connected to a UPS.
How much and how many of the above, determines how much capacity needed, (how big a battery, providing how many minutes of operating time).
Also, you need to evaluate if you want more than the minimum.
Minimum: Upon a power loss, your UPS should send a signal to your PC to do an immediate but controlled power-off. It should take 1-3 minutes at most. Your monitor doesn't have to be connected as you can't do anything yourself anyway so you don't need to see what's going on.
Additional capacity:
If you normally work on your computer such that an unanticipated immediate shut-down might disrupt valuable work, and possibly result in data loss.
* Example: You spend an hour putting together a presentation with PowerPoint, which is set to do auto-backups every 10 minutes.
* The power fails, the monitor goes dark, the UPS commands the computer to shut down (same as if on a Windows PC in mid-work, you hit Start, Shut-down and the PC closed out all programs currently running, without saving the work).
* RESULT: You loose up to 9 minutes worth of work.
Or maybe you have software that can't do regular auto-backups, or shut-down in mid-work could cause other problems.
SOLUTION: provide sufficient extra run-time capacity in the UPS so you can manually shut down your work, minimizing disruption. IE: buy a battery that is bigger than the minimum, so that you have an extra 5-10 minutes to finish what you're doing, save it and close out all your programs.
To give you a more specific answer, you'll need to do some shopping on capacities vs what you have and what you need. As an example: I have a huge tower case full of internal HDDs, plus several external HDDs, two powered ports, a couple of monitors, and 4 power strips. They are all connected to my UPS: APC UPS BX1000G (providing 1000 VA capacity), cost back in 2010 = $100, replaced battery last week for $40. I probably over-bought as it's software says it can handle all that for over 20 minutes, and I really only need about 5. So if I replaced it, I'd probably look at a 500 VA capacity or a bit less, unit).
Note: When you buy a UPS, either get it from an actual store and carry it out, or get it from somewhere that provides free shipping, as these things are HEAVY (lead battery inside, remember?). If you pay for shipping, it will be a LOT.
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