Helpful ReplyPower outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events.

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Beepster
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2015/07/06 15:22:04 (permalink)

Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events.

Not sure what happened. Perfectly clear day here. No storms or whatnot otherwise I would save my work, shut down and manually disconnect my power cords. All seems to be fine (I have rebooted) but I likely lost my unsaved work (not important). I'll get a battery backup someday but my little Belkin power conditioning/trip circuit bar has to do for now.
 
It did get me thinking about these types of abrupt power losses, their effect on the hardware and data and how, aside from the obviously solution of owning a universal power supply (which avoids the problem altogether) people in the know cope/deal with/generally be SMRT about such things.
 
I just boot into Safe Mode first (at prompt) then reboot normally. This always seems to work just fine (and maybe booting normally these days is fine too). I just want to understand and learn and sponge up little tricks from people who know better... as always.
 
So... open thread on loss of power issues. Might be interesting and useful.
 
Cheers.
#1
Doktor Avalanche
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/06 15:27:31 (permalink)
One day it might not work fine 
 
You should be running...
chkdsk (drive) /f
 
... for all your drives after an unscheduled shutdown....
 
Cheers!
post edited by Doktor Avalanche - 2015/07/06 15:35:20

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#2
Doktor Avalanche
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/06 15:35:49 (permalink)
BTW you only need to boot into safe mode if your machine won't start correctly for some reason, it won't do any repairs.... The other reason to boot into safe mode is to do a better scan for viruses.
 
This is also worth running periodically...
 
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/26512-dism-fixing-component-store-corruption-windows-8-a.html
 
... and backup regularly!
 
post edited by Doktor Avalanche - 2015/07/06 15:50:47

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#3
Beepster
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/06 15:40:32 (permalink)
Hi, Alex. Just for in thread reference...
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHKDSK
 
Curious what the /f is for (would we not be pointing to C then E and then whatever is left on the system?)
 
Obviously I have no clue about this crap.
#4
Beepster
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/06 15:44:47 (permalink)
Yeah, the important stuff gets backed up and starter images are in place.
 
Now I gotta wonder if the extra money I spent on my fancy Coolermaster PSU might help ease the sheer shock of such power losses to the other hardware compared to perhaps the lower quality $20 PSUs.
 
Either way all seems to be well. I just like reading about stuff like this.
#5
Doktor Avalanche
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/06 15:46:42 (permalink)
FYI I changed #3 to a better link.
 
For chkdsk:
http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/how-to-scan-fix-hard-drives-with-chkdsk-in-windows-8/
 
Cheers Beep...
 
 
post edited by Doktor Avalanche - 2015/07/06 15:52:55

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#6
Beepster
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/06 16:14:35 (permalink)
Thanks, Alex.
 
You know me. As I stumble my dirty little bleeples into various conundrums and pontifications I figure we might as well discuss it here. It always ends up with some great info and convo.
 
I seem to be alright with this recent blackout (still don't know WTF it was but I'm guessing dum dum landlord crap) but this does seem like a useful topic to archive and discuss on the forum. I wonder what some of our resident DAW builders have to say on the subject.
 
Cheers.
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Doktor Avalanche
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/06 16:27:09 (permalink)
Def would run chkdsk at least. Very good chance you have corruption althoughit might not appear critical until after several more outages...

Just backup first in case it uncovers serious corruption. I run chkdsk and defrag once a
month as part of general maintenance...

And sfc maybe twice a year.

Ta.
post edited by Doktor Avalanche - 2015/07/06 16:34:42

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#8
Jeff Evans
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/06 16:58:55 (permalink)
Of interest too is what happens if you are in the middle of recording and you get a power failure. How much of the audio files will you have once you get going again. I believe Pro Tools will have the audio up the point of the power failure but many other DAW's erase everything you have recorded so far and there will be nothing.
 
I am only thinking of that amazing solo you just did before the power failure!
 
sfc is very good too. Sometimes when you run this it will repair damaged system files and get your machine back in order. Not a bad thing to run regularly a couple of times a year as Doktor Avalanche suggests. I started getting some slightly weird behavior after some bad shutdowns and once I ran this everything went back to normal and being solid.

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#9
dcumpian
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/07 08:26:56 (permalink)
While I don't think it is as bad as it used to be, you should watch out for power shock damage to your motherboard and RAM. Also, If a drive is writing at the time of the power loss, the disk itself can be physically damaged (scratched, really).
 
A UPS costs between $200-400, depending on power needs and desired runtime. Compared to the cost of a new PC, or even having to replace parts, I think it's a no brainer. Either that or move to a laptop
 
Regards,
Dan

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#10
Jim Roseberry
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/07 09:04:01 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby Mitch_I 2015/07/08 14:11:52
Be careful with electrical "outages".
Had one years back (power company came out to do a temporary repair).
That electrical issue took out a new range and business phone system.
New house in a new neighborhood... lots of construction (so it's not always older places)
Called the power company... and they took absolutely zero responsibility.
 
If you have an outage while recording:
You'll likely lose the track you were recording.
Wav files already written to HD will still be on the HD.
If you hadn't saved the project, the (already written) wav files will still be on the HD... but won't be referenced in the project.  In this case, you'd need to import the wav files and manually line them up.
Save often!  Ctrl + S is easy to grab.
 
Obviously a UPS is safest.
Make sure you have an up-to-date backup image file.
If you know there's going to be a major electrical storm, unplug your studio gear.
 
Most likely to be damaged is the power-supply.
 
 

Best Regards,

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#11
TerraSin
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/07 10:14:45 (permalink)
We get power outages here all the time. Never any issue with lost work other than what I might have been currently recording (most everything is midi though so not much of an issue since I have it setup to save every few changes anyway). Never any hardware failures from it either. It's just something that happens. Make sure you have a solid surge protector and you'll be fine in that aspect. I recommend APC for the consumer grade.
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/07 12:53:02 (permalink)

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#13
bitflipper
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/07 15:15:02 (permalink) ☄ Helpfulby Mitch_I 2015/07/08 14:13:20
Without a UPS, the biggest danger for your DAW is corrupt files, but usually only if you were actively recording at the time of the outage. The second-biggest danger is damage to your power supply. A distant third-most-likely is damage to motherboard, RAM and disk drives.
 
Simply losing power abruptly will not necessarily cause any of these bad things to occur. More likely, it's the surge that happens when the power comes back on that does the damage. So one simple measure you can practice is to quickly shut everything off and then wait a few minutes after the power returns before booting back up.
 
A small UPS is a very good investment. You can get a decent one for ~$200. It only needs to keep you running for a minute or so, long enough to complete disk writes so your audio files aren't corrupted if you were recording when the power went out. But you also need one with adequate capacity to power your video monitors (hard to shut down with no video) as well as your audio monitors (mainly to protect from surges that could damage them).
 
I have everything running through a UPS, and have done so for decades. If I lose power only the lights go out, and maybe a space heater if it's winter. Audio interface, synthesizers, speakers and computer stay on. Only for about 20 minutes, but that's all I need to avoid disaster.
 
UPSs usually include some kind of "power conditioning" too. I put that in quotes because there is no formal definition for what that phrase actually means, so vendors can stick in a 50-cent choke and a 10-cent varistor and call that "conditioned power". Taking out line noise isn't as important as surge suppression. ('Cause you've already got all your audio on a separate dedicated circuit, right? And all the ground wires are connected, and not daisy-chained?). A good surge suppressor is what will keep your power supply and motherboard from getting toasted, so make sure it's got a real suppressor that won't itself get blown up the first time lightning strikes nearby.
 
Another caveat for those of you who are smugly self-assured because you already have a UPS: they wear out. It's a good idea to test them once in a while by pulling the power plug and timing how long they continue to power your gear. You might be shocked that the battery that lasted 30 minutes when new now gives you 30 seconds.
 
(In a previous life, I was trained as a power-quality consultant for large computer rooms. It was seriously boring sh*t and involved crawling under floors and stuff, so after a year of it I went back to software development.)
 


All else is in doubt, so this is the truth I cling to. 

My Stuff
#14
batsbrew
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/07 15:29:51 (permalink)
the one i posted only costs $74

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#15
Beepster
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/07 17:32:56 (permalink)
Awesome thread as always, guys. Lots of stuff I could say/ask but I'm just gonna absorb the wisdom for now.
 
Thanks.
#16
Beagle
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/08 14:00:30 (permalink)
Excellent post Dave.  I would only like to add my pedantic two cents about my pet peeve...
 
Today's consumer UPS systems are NOT actually UPS systems.  that's a misnomer! 
 
UPS is an acronym which stands for Uninterrupted Power Supply.  If you look at the specs of any consumer grade UPS, they always mention "switching time" in msecs.
 
there is no switching time needed if the UPS is a true Uninterrupted source.  a true UPS system runs everything off of a battery and the interruption to the power source will not affect the system its protecting at all.  today's consumer UPS's have a battery that they SWITCH to when the AC power is interrupted, NOT running off of the battery all the time as is in a true UPS.

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slartabartfast
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/08 17:37:48 (permalink)
Beagle
Excellent post Dave.  I would only like to add my pedantic two cents about my pet peeve...
 
Today's consumer UPS systems are NOT actually UPS systems.  that's a misnomer! 
 
UPS is an acronym which stands for Uninterrupted Power Supply.  If you look at the specs of any consumer grade UPS, they always mention "switching time" in msecs.
 
there is no switching time needed if the UPS is a true Uninterrupted source.  a true UPS system runs everything off of a battery and the interruption to the power source will not affect the system its protecting at all.  today's consumer UPS's have a battery that they SWITCH to when the AC power is interrupted, NOT running off of the battery all the time as is in a true UPS.


 Probably true. On the other hand, I have never had an issue with a consumer UPS keeping my computers running, and I get dozens of power outages annually due to a rural above ground distribution system. I have never had a UPS that will reliably run a computer for more than ten minutes ($30-50 and usually cheaper than buying a new battery)  and have never lost data. When you are not going to be at your computer, save everything, and shut it down. If you are sitting at your computer when the lights go out, save everything and shut it down. Do not put your space heater on the UPS.
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Doktor Avalanche
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/08 21:30:24 (permalink)
Beagle
Excellent post Dave.  I would only like to add my pedantic two cents about my pet peeve...
 
Today's consumer UPS systems are NOT actually UPS systems.  that's a misnomer! 
 
UPS is an acronym which stands for Uninterrupted Power Supply.  If you look at the specs of any consumer grade UPS, they always mention "switching time" in msecs.
 
there is no switching time needed if the UPS is a true Uninterrupted source.  a true UPS system runs everything off of a battery and the interruption to the power source will not affect the system its protecting at all.  today's consumer UPS's have a battery that they SWITCH to when the AC power is interrupted, NOT running off of the battery all the time as is in a true UPS.


I've only used UPS's for servers for businesses and they can be quite expensive. The battery has to be replaced every so often as well..

So this is news to me, learned something... So basically consumer UPS's turn PC's into laptops power wise! Cheers

Edit ... OK it's the opposite..
post edited by Doktor Avalanche - 2015/07/08 21:40:18

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#19
synkrotron
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/09 07:16:07 (permalink)
Hi Beep,
 
Sorry to hear of your PC troubles...
 
dcumpian
Either that or move to a laptop



Yeah, a laptop has a few disadvantages, at least for larger studios, but I've managed on my lonesome for a couple of years with my laptop now and not having to worry about accidentally turning off my pc at the wall (easily done) is great. Unless I need to record 16 audio sources at once I don't think I'll ever go back to a desk top workstation...
 
 

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#20
BassDaddy
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/09 10:59:12 (permalink)
Good post Beepster. I bought a APC on Ebay 7 years ago and is still going. Once you get one you can get replacement batteries for them at a good price.

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#21
Beagle
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/09 13:00:32 (permalink)
slart - correct - the true UPS's are expensive and have to have their batteries changed more often than the consumer ones, which is exactly why they make the consumer ones the way they do.  and normally a switching time of 10msec or so will not very likely cause a loss of power in a consumer computer operating under normal circumstances, so you shouldn't lose data with consumer UPSs under normal circumstances.
 
One could see, however, that a switching time of 10msec to 30msec (typical real world application) could potentially cause someone to lose data if they were using a lot of power during that switch.
 
is this something normal users need to worry about?  probably not.  it's just a pet peeve of mine.  and it DOES help to be informed just in case you think you might be a user who might be affected by a switch time like this.
 
this pet peeve is just one of mine...I also can't stand it when people say "PIN Number" or "VIN Number"...
 

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#22
batsbrew
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/09 18:07:55 (permalink)
cheap, i tell you.
 
post edited by batsbrew - 2015/07/09 18:16:00

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#23
tlw
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/11 15:40:40 (permalink)
Only just spotted this thread...
 
About a decade ago I lost a PC due to a power failure.
 
Where we live, despite it being an industrial inner city area in the UK where these things aren't supposed to happen, we typically get a couple of power cuts a year. Apparently the problem is that lots of the high-voltage cabling is (very) old and underground and suffers from water ingress. Which means power cuts. The electricity people won't replace the entire cabling because it's a huge job that would take ages and badly upset their profits. So they keep patching things up and have been for about 25 years.
 
Anyway, we usually get a few minutes warning as the power flickers a bit before dying. This one time, with no warning, the power went completely off and back on again something like 10 times in two or three seconds then cut completely.
 
On restarting the PC some of the magic blue smoke got out. I opened it up to find a big burst capacitor in the psu and some charred areas on the motherboard.
 
So we got a good quality UPS. Which has finally gone out of service this week because its' second set of lead-acid batteries finally expired, which they seem to do every five years or so, and both the UPS and the required batteries haven't been manufactured for several years. The UPS wasn't cheap, but it handled quite a number of power cuts giving ample time for Windows to automatically shut down when the UPS notified it of a power failure.
 
Still looking for a replacement, the cheap consumer "UPSs" are rubbish, to keep a PC and screen running for the 30-60 seconds an automatic or manual shutdown takes requires more power than many of them can supply. They also tend to be a switching supply serving a square-wave current not sine wave which has implications as well. Some psus really don't like that kind of AC.
 
I guess the answer is to use just laptops because they're power-cut proof, though they come with their own sets of issues.

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ATI 7750 graphics+ 1GB RAM, 2xIntel 520 series 220GB SSDs, 1 TB Samsung F3 + 1 TB WD HDDs, Seasonic fanless 460W psu, RME Fireface UFX, Focusrite Octopre.
Assorted real synths, guitars, mandolins, diatonic accordions, percussion, fx and other stuff.
#24
Beepster
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Re: Power outage while DAW was running. No UPS. Let's discuss implications of such events. 2015/07/11 16:12:22 (permalink)
I have been watching this thread despite my silence. I guess I've got a bunch of stuff to ask but for now I think I will limit it to this one question...
 
I spent about $100 on a nice 700W Coolermaster power supply for my system when I built it. IIRC (this was almost four year ago) I dropped the extra coin to a) make sure I needn't worry about powering the unit (700w seemed to be above what's needed for a DAW) and b) because it seemed to claim that it does a bit of conditioning, protection and provides better power distribution.
 
No idea if that's true which is why I'm asking... by buying this higher end PSU did I also perhaps buy at least a BIT of a buffer for avoiding damage to crucial components such as the MOBO? Actually I think my biggest concern is the MOBO and CPU considering they are the most expensive parts of the rig and the most PITA to replace.
 
Anyway... beyond that I have a Belkin power strip that supposedly provides surge protection (with $1000 of insurance against surge damage supposedly but whatever... I doubt they'd pay out but it does lead me to believe it's better than some dollar store strip). At the end of the day, after I shut down, I wait a few minutes for everything to discharge then flip Coolermaster's power switch off and THEN turn the Belkin strip off. If I hear a storm a brewin' I even totally remove the power cables from the back of the computer and unplug my interface.
 
I also live in a new building (built in the past 5 years) and they just changed out all the hydro hookups/transformers/lines to the building (they literally ripped out all the old poles and everything)... so I guess maybe all that counts towards decent and even power as well (as opposed to all the ancient buildings in ancient neighborhoods with ancient wiring I've lived in in the past).
 
Meh... I do seriously need a proper UPS though.
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