If you don't have a UPS, get one!

[JCitron]

I can't stress this enough. Recently my UPS failed. Initially I thought it was the batteries bricking after 8 years of use, and I had plans of replacing them soon(tm).

Well I forgot about the UPS until we had a storm come through and knocked out the power for a split second. It wasn't enough to completely bring the power down, but it was long enough to reboot my PC while Trainzing. I brought up the system again, ran chkdsk, and a database repair and all seemed good. I also looked at replacing the batteries in my UPS.

The batteries I needed would cost me about $100 for replacements and there was a $40 credit when I returned the old ones. I was about to press the order button when I decided to check around on the website first and noticed some forum posts about replacing batteries only to find that it didn't work. One poster did some forensics on his dead UPS to find out why his brand new batteries didn't charge. It turned out his UPS charging circuits had failed due to a surge.

After reading that, and rather than risk it with my elder UPS, I ordered a new one for $200 with free shipping. This included new batteries and a 3 year warranty. I then did some forensics and found that sure enough something wasn't right. When I opened the case, I could smell that ever so familiar but foreboding odor of burned electronic parts. Sure enough, the unit had blown some capacitors and there were charred marks near some power transistors. The money was well spent on a new one then since I would have had to go through the RMA, and would end up getting a new UPS anyway.

Now back to the computer and to Trainz...

There were some latent issues with my system. Initially everything seemed well, but I could not login into My Trainz. I could go everywhere else but there. I reinstalled Plus and that didn't do it. I even tried TS12 and I had the same thing. Weird. The only solution, that came much later, was to reinstall the OS. Something got munched beyond what I could find even by running various network tools.

With no other recourse, I took my data from my external backup drive ---- good thing for backups, and plugged that into my laptop and could Trainz from there after replicating the backup and turning that into an active copy. The problem, however, was this data was a few days old and I missed the routes I was working on so I CDP'd them from my desktop and put them into my active copy running on my back up drive I plugged into my laptop.

When I opened up the recent route I was working on when the computer crashed, I got an instant CTD. Yup couldn't start. Other routes not touched were fine, or so I thought, and I continued testing and found out others too got munched as well. Not good. I reinstalled DLC, restored my routes and did an EDR. Things were up and running, or so I though.

It gets worse...

I noticed my backup drive now getting really hot and losing performance quickly. This is not a good sign so I installed HD Sentinel to check the drive only to find the drive was hurt as well! I promptly ordered a new external backup drive and copied off everything from there on to the new drive, and took that data and turned that into my fresh database to work with on my desktop. My hard drives were fine on my desktop so I was lucky there, otherwise, I would be replacing those as well.

The old backup drive, however, is toast now and is no longer recognized. I was lucky in that other data was intact, at least what I checked is okay, so I count my blessing for now. I have gigabytes of rare sheet music scanned for me from private sources as well as other documents, pictures, etc., I had placed on the drive in addition to my Trainz backups, and Trainz downloaded content from third-party sites.

Summary:

I dodged a big bullet here, but wasn't completely unscathed. It's a good thing I had an external backup drive, however, the UPS that the drive was plugged into failed and I neglected to remedy that immediately. The backup drive eventually failed from the hit and everything was nearly lost initially. Heed the warnings here. If you have a UPS telling you there are problems with it, do something about it right away. If you don't have one, get one. You won't always be as lucky as I was with this one.

Lesson learned.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

What good is a UPS that is killed by the very thing it’s meant to protect you from?

 

[JCitron]

What good is a UPS that is killed by the very thing it’s meant to protect you from?

True, but the UPS took the hit probably ages ago and was working fine until the inevitable power outage which don't happen very often where I live. I've gone for nearly 3 years without an outage.

 

[pitkin]

@jcitron
I noticed my backup drive now getting really hot and losing performance quickly. This is not a good sign so I installed HD Sentinel to check the drive only to find the drive was hurt as well! I promptly ordered a new external backup drive and copied off everything from there on to the new drive, and took that data and turned that into my fresh database to work with on my desktop. My hard drives were fine on my desktop so I was lucky there, otherwise, I would be replacing those as well.



I had a desktop internal drive go flaky last month (not Trainz, fortunately). I found that I can power it up from a usb docking station and once after a few tries I was able to copy the files from it.

 

[wreeder]

Glad to know I'm not the only one that trouble shoots by sense of smell. :hehe:

I'm a big believer in UPSs and have every one of my electronic devices plugged into one. I also test mine on a regular basis by unplugging everything connected to it and then unplugging it from the outlet. It should be able to run itself for a good amount of time. If it has a display, then monitor the battery drain. If it drops quickly and then slows that is a sign you need to replace the batteries as one of the cells has a problem.

Also if you have your Internet modem or streaming devices plugged into one, power cycle them whenever your access seems slow.

William

 

[JCitron]

That was my mistake. I didn't do a test in quite sometime, and it caught me!

Troubleshooting by that sense of smell. Yup that does work well and so does happening on a burning component the hard way. I've burned my fingers while searching for bad chips back in the old days as I traced a circuit around its iterations. I had one static memory board that was easy to fix that way. If you saw a discolored or chard chip, that was the bad one 99.9% of the time.

 

[johnwhelan]

Just a comment, I used to use APC UPSes, we used more than a few dozen at work after I specced them.

I picked up an APC back ups, I already had a couple, and just unplugged it to see it was working and the computer died as if it was unplugged. I played the changes with an older APC back ups and that one worked fine. I contacted APC and got asked was it an energy saver PC. I said yes and they explained that that model UPS didn't work with energy saving PCs but nothing was indicated on the box so I ended up switching it with the dealer for Cyberpower UPS which worked fine. Apparently it was to do with the way the sine wave was generated.

So if you buy one unplug it and just check it works as it should even if it does say APC on the box. The more expensive ones that can be monitored remotely apparently have better sine wave generators, as did my old model.

Cheerio John

 

[JCitron]

Just a comment, I used to use APC UPSes, we used more than a few dozen at work after I specced them.

I picked up an APC back ups, I already had a couple, and just unplugged it to see it was working and the computer died as if it was unplugged. I played the changes with an older APC back ups and that one worked fine. I contacted APC and got asked was it an energy saver PC. I said yes and they explained that that model UPS didn't work with energy saving PCs but nothing was indicated on the box so I ended up switching it with the dealer for Cyberpower UPS which worked fine. Apparently it was to do with the way the sine wave was generated.

So if you buy one unplug it and just check it works as it should even if it does say APC on the box. The more expensive ones that can be monitored remotely apparently have better sine wave generators, as did my old model.

Cheerio John

I remember that scenario as well. The one that died after 8 years of continuous life was an APC and the new one is as well. The current one, like the older one monitors its power and also the manual says it's meant for game computers because of some special filtering, etc. If I can get nearly a decade out of this one, I'll be happy with that.

Cyber Power UPSs are good and so are Tripp-Lite. I ended up getting a big Tripp-Lite for the Ayaya Definity phone system the company had because we couldn't get an APC that was rated high enough for it at the time without blowing the budget. It served its purpose well and prevented a system reset every morning when the power grid switched. I kept telling my boss that's what the problem was and he didn't believe me. After going through a complete hassle of setting up a power monitor, it proved exactly what I said it was in the readout saved to the paper tape. He didn't say anything after that, and the $350 was a worthy investment.

This boss also didn't want to spring for some batteries for one of the big UPSs that protected the data server and one day there was a major power hit due to some grid work outside the building. The server took a hit, but I was able to recover the RAID. He was let go after that because I saved the emails he sent me saying that he didn't want to spend money on the batteries. The replacement batteries were only $200 at the time before the credit on trade-in.

 

[pcas1986]

...
It gets worse...

I noticed my backup drive now getting really hot and losing performance quickly. This is not a good sign so I installed HD Sentinel to check the drive only to find the drive was hurt as well! I promptly ordered a new external backup drive and copied off everything from there on to the new drive, and took that data and turned that into my fresh database to work with on my desktop. My hard drives were fine on my desktop so I was lucky there, otherwise, I would be replacing those as well.

The old backup drive, however, is toast now and is no longer recognized. I was lucky in that other data was intact, at least what I checked is okay, so I count my blessing for now. I have gigabytes of rare sheet music scanned for me from private sources as well as other documents, pictures, etc., I had placed on the drive in addition to my Trainz backups, and Trainz downloaded content from third-party sites.
...

And I just threw out the several packs of blank CDs and DVDs I had in my study cupboard. They were good for Trainz backups, photos, music, etc.

Losing a couple of days work on a route is annoying but not as much trouble as frying the boot drive on your PC. Every time I upgrade my PC it takes me about two weeks to re-install everything.

I'll confess I'm not an UPS fan. One I had years ago worked very well except when you really wanted it to work. I forget now but it was probably fried like yours.

 

[RoysTrainz]

Scary thing for sure and i feel for you John but amazing we here have most outages i think of the entire world with and without T storms. The last month they finally connected new 3 phase powerlines thru the canyon near us up into the Phue Payol Mnts and connect to the grid of the neighbour province Mukdahan.
My best guess is that when the power that feeds us normally fails the grid connection should, could bring relieve .
I use for ages more than 10 years for sure APS back ups 1400 it works for surge and power outage but not for prolonged usage of the battery maybe 30 min the most. Thought of buying a new and heavier one but not sure if that is needed.

 

[JCitron]

And I just threw out the several packs of blank CDs and DVDs I had in my study cupboard. They were good for Trainz backups, photos, music, etc.

Losing a couple of days work on a route is annoying but not as much trouble as frying the boot drive on your PC. Every time I upgrade my PC it takes me about two weeks to re-install everything.

I'll confess I'm not an UPS fan. One I had years ago worked very well except when you really wanted it to work. I forget now but it was probably fried like yours.

We still use CDs and DVDs here for a lot of stuff including my own music recordings so people who don't have computers can listen to them. I still have some elders who are 100% non-computer users in my family.

I wasn't keen on them initially until I worked in a computer room and saw that the do work when needed. I agree like most insurance they're not there when you need them. I guess this is a common problem with these devices. The circuits eventually become overloaded. We did get hit with a couple of big surges and took a big hit a month or so ago by a lightning strike up the street. That CRAAAK! scared the you know what out of me when it hit. The UPS beeped then and everything appeared fine, but apparently that big hit did the damage because a short time ago we had the brown out or surge that took down my data.

Replacing boot drives is really painful when the system has to be rebuilt from scratch. Rebuilding takes me about the same time as I look for software, discs, downloads, licenses, etc. There are utilities that will transfer the contents from one drive to another and work on boot drives as well. There are a couple of them that work very well that I've used in the past with great success.

https://www.partitionwizard.com/

https://www.easeus.com/

Of the two, MinTools Partition Wizard is the better of the two and has a confirmation button to carry out the process so nothing happens immediately.

 

[JCitron]

Scary thing for sure and i feel for you John but amazing we here have most outages i think of the entire world with and without T storms. The last month they finally connected new 3 phase powerlines thru the canyon near us up into the Phue Payol Mnts and connect to the grid of the neighbour province Mukdahan.
My best guess is that when the power that feeds us normally fails the grid connection should, could bring relieve .
I use for ages more than 10 years for sure APS back ups 1400 it works for surge and power outage but not for prolonged usage of the battery maybe 30 min the most. Thought of buying a new and heavier one but not sure if that is needed.

I ended getting the APC 1500 which was very close to the one I replaced. I get about the same amount of time out of mine, but I don't plan on operating for long on battery and only use that battery time to shut things down then turn the device off until the lights come back on. At one time I thought we were right up there with the outages. We would lose the power if we thought hard about it! Recently the city cut a lot of tree branches and replaced all the poles up and down the streets. This helped a lot and we don't see the problems we once had. During the major ice storm in 2008, I was without power for 15 hours. This happened again in 2018 but that was due to power going out on the mains when ice pulled the wires down, and no trees did any damage on my street. This last outage had us without power for 26 hours and the whole city was out.

It's good to read you're finally getting the power you need. Hopefully this will last for quite sometime and not need an upgrade anytime soon.

 

[autodctr]

Before retirement, my place of work had about 70 desk computers. Each one had their own UPS. We also kept about 20 extra ones on hand. We learned early on that when one dies, it is just better to trash it and install a new one. Locally, you can find a small UPS for about $30-35 US.

You may also consider one that gives you a voltage reading on an LED. For instance, here in the US our line voltage is 110V. A few months ago, my UPS started beeping while I was sitting here. No lights had flickered and it quit beeping on it's own. A few minutes later, same thing. When I looked at the LED, it indicated 142V !! It was a severe over-voltage. I immediately shut everything off and notified the electric company. If it had not been for the warning, who knows what may have been damaged or even caught fire!

 

[epa]

I work at a battery store, so I was able to source a decent APC brand UPS and a fresh Duracell 12-volt sealed lead acid battery for it fairly cheap and retire the cheap power strip from Target.

Thankfully, I haven't needed to use it yet (amazing, being in Kansas during the spring and summer) but I have a little more confidence that in the event of a power outage or surge, I at least have enough time to shut everything down properly.

If you care about your electronics, $100 or so for a UPS is a great investment.

I'm glad your stuff wasn't seriously damaged, John. I would've had a heart attack at the sheer thought of losing my stuff.

... Recently the city cut a lot of tree branches and replaced all the poles up and down the streets. ...

The poles would have to be literally rotting away and hollow inside for them to do that around here. It's a miracle we don't lose power here more often.

Matt

 

[wreeder]

I recently moved some stuff around while I was testing my 4 UPSs and decided to replace an old Cyberpower unit with something newer. Office Depot had a APC BN900M on sale for $89 US. It is in the Back-UPS line so it comes with the cable and software to shut down your computer automatically when the power goes off for more than a certain amount of time. It is a great under the desk unit as it has a low profile and the plugs are on the top instead of the back. It is a pain to crawl under the desk to access the outlets on the upright UPSs.

900 VA 480 Watts so more than enough for a big gaming rig, all external drives and your Internet or wifi gear.

That translates to about 4.8 amps so to be safe lets say 4.5. Your computer should pull about 1 or 2 amps when running but will pull maybe 50% more when it is starting up as it takes more power to spin up drives, of course SSD drives don't do that. LCD monitors pull about .2 amps and don't plug a CRT into a UPS unless it is a big one.

William

 

[JCitron]

I work at a battery store, so I was able to source a decent APC brand UPS and a fresh Duracell 12-volt sealed lead acid battery for it fairly cheap and retire the cheap power strip from Target.

Thankfully, I haven't needed to use it yet (amazing, being in Kansas during the spring and summer) but I have a little more confidence that in the event of a power outage or surge, I at least have enough time to shut everything down properly.

If you care about your electronics, $100 or so for a UPS is a great investment.

I'm glad your stuff wasn't seriously damaged, John. I would've had a heart attack at the sheer thought of losing my stuff.



The poles would have to be literally rotting away and hollow inside for them to do that around here. It's a miracle we don't lose power here more often.

Matt

That's great you can source the parts like that. Unfortunately I didn't get off so cheap because my UPS was malfunctioning anyway. You definitely need a UPS where you live. I watched some substantial storms in Kansas last year online that did nothing spit out lightning for hours. One of them started in Goodland and ended up in Scots City and spawned tornadoes and lightning that was more like a strobe light than lightning. This particular storm went on for about 8 hours before finally collapsing.

Up here in New England, we have a lot of very tall towering trees with many that were well above the wires. The city replaced all the poles with much taller ones than we had that were quite old to begin with, and also trimmed the tall trees away from them. We lost a bit of the shade, but it removed the risk of losing them during storms.

 

[JCitron]

I recently moved some stuff around while I was testing my 4 UPSs and decided to replace an old Cyberpower unit with something newer. Office Depot had a APC BN900M on sale for $89 US. It is in the Back-UPS line so it comes with the cable and software to shut down your computer automatically when the power goes off for more than a certain amount of time. It is a great under the desk unit as it has a low profile and the plugs are on the top instead of the back. It is a pain to crawl under the desk to access the outlets on the upright UPSs.

900 VA 480 Watts so more than enough for a big gaming rig, all external drives and your Internet or wifi gear.

That translates to about 4.8 amps so to be safe lets say 4.5. Your computer should pull about 1 or 2 amps when running but will pull maybe 50% more when it is starting up as it takes more power to spin up drives, of course SSD drives don't do that. LCD monitors pull about .2 amps and don't plug a CRT into a UPS unless it is a big one.

William

I have the APC 1500 BackUPS line. I also have my digital piano plugged into as well as my external drives, my PC and two displays. I agree the LCDs draw so much less power than the old CRTs. I only wish they had better resolution like the old monitors did.

 

[wreeder]

You'll enjoy this story. In the data center I worked in before I retired. We had 3 big 15000 VA 10000 Watt UPSs and a natural gas generator. A customer wanted to use a line of sight wireless system to beam data between their office up on the side of the mountain to their gear in the data center rather then pay us for the bandwidth. The gear in the data center was mirror image of their production gear in their office so lots of traffic. They got it all set up but the system was coax cable from the transceiver on the roof to a media converter that convert it to twisted pair Ethernet. Their coax cable wasn't long enough to make it to the data center so they stopped in the phone closet and then ran Twisted Pair to the data center. I told them that they should get a UPS for the media converter as the line power was not real good. I guess the tech guys told someone that did the ordering to order an UPS. We were surprised when a couple of days later a APC 3000 VA upright unit showed up at the data center. I called them to let them know it was there. When they came over to plug it in they were shocked and we couldn't stop laughing about it. The media converter pulled 0.2 amps. That UPS would have run it for days.

William

 

[JCitron]

You'll enjoy this story. In the data center I worked in before I retired. We had 3 big 15000 VA 10000 Watt UPSs and a natural gas generator. A customer wanted to use a line of sight wireless system to beam data between their office up on the side of the mountain to their gear in the data center rather then pay us for the bandwidth. The gear in the data center was mirror image of their production gear in their office so lots of traffic. They got it all set up but the system was coax cable from the transceiver on the roof to a media converter that convert it to twisted pair Ethernet. Their coax cable wasn't long enough to make it to the data center so they stopped in the phone closet and then ran Twisted Pair to the data center. I told them that they should get a UPS for the media converter as the line power was not real good. I guess the tech guys told someone that did the ordering to order an UPS. We were surprised when a couple of days later a APC 3000 VA upright unit showed up at the data center. I called them to let them know it was there. When they came over to plug it in they were shocked and we couldn't stop laughing about it. The media converter pulled 0.2 amps. That UPS would have run it for days.

William

That is funny. I suppose we could say they were well provisioned in case there was an outage.

 

[wreeder]

Yep, that is for sure. They left it that way for about 3 years. It was so big that I would use it as a step when I needed to get to the far corner of the closet. They gave up on the wireless link. It was too sensitive to weather. They got dark fiber run from the data center to their office.