paulperry•2mo agoProlific Poster

Had a client's backup drive fail right after I swapped their old UPS

I replaced their 8 year old battery backup with a new one last Tuesday, and the next day their external drive just stopped showing up. Turns out the old UPS was giving dirty power that the drive's power supply had slowly gotten used to. Has anyone else seen a new UPS cause a hidden problem like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

david_henderson62mo ago

Actually, the dirty power from the old UPS likely caused the damage over time. The drive's power supply didn't get used to it, it was slowly being stressed. The failure just happened to show up after you removed the bad power source. It's a weird coincidence, but the new unit probably saved the rest of their gear. Makes you wonder how many other parts were on the edge, right?

the_kim2mo ago

My old shop had a similar thing happen with a printer. I always figured clean power was just clean power, no downsides. This makes me worry about the other old gear we swapped out over the years.

wesley_hart1mo ago

Nah I gotta disagree. The old UPS was probably filtering out noise that the printer's power supply was actually designed to expect. Once you took it away the clean power let some capacitor or something run outside its normal range and it finally popped. Happens all the time with audio gear too.