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I fear lightning. (re: surge protectors and backups)


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I fear lightning. (re: surge protectors and backups)
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LudwigVan
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Minnesota
 
2006-01-17, 20:18

Quote:
Originally Posted by maverick808
To be honest, I'm really struggling to think of any reason I would fully turn off any of my machines other than if I was installing some hardware like a memory upgrade.
A thunderstorm is rolling into town?
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murbot
Hoonigan
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Canada
 
2006-01-17, 20:36

Yeah, I've lost electonics to lightning storms before. I always turn off and unplug shit when a storm's a brewin'.
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PKIDelirium
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Join Date: Oct 2005
 
2006-01-17, 20:57

That's why I have my computer equipment on a surge protector, that is has both the power, phone, and cable connected through it.
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Kickaha
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2006-01-17, 23:58

Most any consumer power protector isn't going to do squat against a lightning strike - for that you need a whole-house surge protector to really have a chance of it working.

OTOH, that's what backups and UPS insurance guarantees are for.
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Banana
is the next Chiquita
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
 
2006-01-18, 09:28

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Kickaha
Most any consumer power protector isn't going to do squat against a lightning strike - for that you need a whole-house surge protector to really have a chance of it working.

OTOH, that's what backups and UPS insurance guarantees are for.
Feh. That explains why they never says anything about lightning. They just advertise "good up to X joules", but doesn't give any references (e.g. how many joules there are in a lightning bolt). Now it's all clear; they just can't admit that their product is uselss shit.
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dfiler
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Pittsburgh
 
2006-01-18, 09:35

A surge protector should in fact keep your gear safe from lightening strikes... that is... if absolutely everything connected by wries to the device is also surge protected. That includes audio, video, and network cabling hooked to other stuff. Even some cheapo surge protectors are now offering massive "insurance" for connected electronics. They do this because it is quite elementery and cheap to construct a reliable surge protector.

Oh... and back to the boot times. The test should also take into account memory configuration. Memory is checked on boot and more memory means longer delay. I think it takes around 2 minutes for 4gigs of memory on our AMD based servers here.

Yeah, that video is meaningless.
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Kickaha
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2006-01-18, 09:55

Sorry for taking this off topic, but I think this is a very important point that most people should know about. I'll stop now.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Banana
Feh. That explains why they never says anything about lightning. They just advertise "good up to X joules", but doesn't give any references (e.g. how many joules there are in a lightning bolt). Now it's all clear; they just can't admit that their product is uselss shit.
Actually, surge protectors are *VERY* useful, because the average electricity grid has large variances during normal operation, and they moderate them out quite well. A battery back up system does an even better job. Those mini-surges and warps can drastically reduce the lifetime of your power supplies, and if they voltage blurbs get past cheap power supplies, they can cause damage to the electronics themselves. Rare, but possible. If you live, like I do, in an area prone to brown-outs, a surge protector is definitely a must.

The only problem is...

Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler
A surge protector should in fact keep your gear safe from lightening strikes... that is... if absolutely everything connected by wries to the device is also surge protected. That includes audio, video, and network cabling hooked to other stuff. Even some cheapo surge protectors are now offering massive "insurance" for connected electronics. They do this because it is quite elementery and cheap to construct a reliable surge protector.
...this isn't true for *direct* strikes. If lightning hits *somewhere* down the grid, you have a very good chance of your surge protector taking care of it. The surge gets moderated by all the stuff between your outlets and the strike point. If lightning hits *directly* on your house, (or the wiring right outside) then no, nothing short of a whole-house protector is going to be highly effective. You might luck out, but that's all it will be - luck. As Banana points out, a lightning bolt has an insane amount of energy (joules) in it, and consumer-grade protectors are rated for much, much less.

Get a battery back up, definitely make sure that every wire is protected somehow, as dfiler suggests, but above all... BACK UP YOUR DATA. Your data is the one thing the insurance policies can't replace, at any price. Oh, and don't back it up to a drive that's connected 24/7. It has to be disconnected to be safe from surges. (Remote backups are even better, but that's not really feasible for most folks, except for a small part of their critical data on something like .Mac or a Google account.)

Last edited by Kickaha : 2006-01-18 at 10:02.
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dfiler
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Pittsburgh
 
2006-01-18, 10:29

Yeah, a direct hit will bypass just about any surge protection. Good thing i'm rated at 8000 joules.

If that doesn't work, I filled out the surge device's warrantee card which covers me up to a half million bucks.

Thankfully a direct hit to your own residence is pretty rare. I'd bet more people spill coke into their computer than take a direct hit.
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bassplayinMacFiend
Banging the Bottom End
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
 
2006-01-18, 10:45

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Kickaha
Get a battery back up, definitely make sure that every wire is protected somehow, as dfiler suggests, but above all... BACK UP YOUR DATA. Your data is the one thing the insurance policies can't replace, at any price. Oh, and don't back it up to a drive that's connected 24/7. It has to be disconnected to be safe from surges. (Remote backups are even better, but that's not really feasible for most folks, except for a small part of their critical data on something like .Mac or a Google account.)
I just started working on data backups again last night. I have 2 computers & 2 external drives and I'm trying to sync them manually and it's a big PITA. I probably have about 6 copies of my schoolwork files (from when I was in school) and such so I'm trying to remove all the copies of copies to try to get to a base set of backup data. I've managed to clear my 60GB external which I'm thinking of using as a bootable backup for my PowerBook (complete mirror which means I can't ever go below 20GB free on laptop). now I just have to see what's on the PowerBook that I've already backed up to my 200GB external.

Anyone know of a good UNIX command to compare my laptop to my 200GB external backup and present me with a list of all the files on my PB that exist on the external drive?
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chucker
 
Join Date: May 2004
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2006-01-18, 10:54

Quote:
Originally Posted by bassplayinMacFiend
Anyone know of a good UNIX command to compare my laptop to my 200GB external backup and present me with a list of all the files on my PB that exist on the external drive?
Hmm, let's see.

Code:
#!/bin/bash -v INTERNAL_VOLUME="Name of your PowerBook built-in drive partition" EXTERNAL_VOLUME="Your external drive partition" cd /Volumes/"${INTERNAL_VOLUME}" find . > ~/comparison.1 cd /Volumes/"${EXTERNAL_VOLUME}" find . > ~/comparison.2 diff -u ~/comparison.1 ~/comparison.2 > comparison.results rm comparison.1 rm comparison.2
Change the two variables (make sure you leave the quotation marks, especially when your volume names contain spaces!), then save this as, say, "Compare.command" and double-click in Finder. You should end up with a file "comparison.results" in your home directory. Now, use a text editor with a nice diff view (such as TextMate) and open.

Or, you could leave out the last three lines (the diff and the two rms) and open both comparison.(number) files in Apple's FileMerge.

It should be noted that I haven't tested this.
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dfiler
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2006-01-18, 11:08

Quote:
Originally Posted by bassplayinMacFiend
Anyone know of a good UNIX command to compare my laptop to my 200GB external backup and present me with a list of all the files on my PB that exist on the external drive?
rsync might be what you're looking for. It is a command line tool for syncronizing files remotely.

rsync is an incredibly efficient way to check-on and transfer only the modified drive sectors of modified files. Truly mind blowing if you undertand what it's doing.

I'm not at an OS X box right now but here are the options available on RH.

Code:
Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync. Please refer to the detailed description below for a complete description. -v, --verbose increase verbosity -q, --quiet decrease verbosity -c, --checksum always checksum -a, --archive archive mode -r, --recursive recurse into directories -R, --relative use relative path names -b, --backup make backups (default ~ suffix) --backup-dir make backups into this directory --suffix=SUFFIX override backup suffix -u, --update update only (don++t overwrite newer files) -l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks -L, --copy-links copy the referent of symlinks --copy-unsafe-links copy links outside the source tree --safe-links ignore links outside the destination tree -H, --hard-links preserve hard links -p, --perms preserve permissions -o, --owner preserve owner (root only) -g, --group preserve group -D, --devices preserve devices (root only) -t, --times preserve times -S, --sparse handle sparse files efficiently -n, --dry-run show what would have been transferred -W, --whole-file copy whole files, no incremental checks --no-whole-file turn off --whole-file -x, --one-file-system don++t cross filesystem boundaries -B, --block-size=SIZE checksum blocking size (default 700) -e, --rsh=COMMAND specify rsh replacement --rsync-path=PATH specify path to rsync on the remote machine -C, --cvs-exclude auto ignore files in the same way CVS does --existing only update files that already exist --ignore-existing ignore files that already exist on the receiving side --delete delete files that don++t exist on the sending side --delete-excluded also delete excluded files on the receiving side --delete-after delete after transferring, not before --ignore-errors delete even if there are IO errors --max-delete=NUM don++t delete more than NUM files --partial keep partially transferred files --force force deletion of directories even if not empty --numeric-ids don++t map uid/gid values by user/group name --timeout=TIME set IO timeout in seconds -I, --ignore-times don++t exclude files that match length and time --size-only only use file size when determining if a file should be transferred --modify-window=NUM Timestamp window (seconds) for file match (default=0) -T --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR --compare-dest=DIR also compare destination files relative to DIR -P equivalent to --partial --progress -z, --compress compress file data --exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN --exclude-from=FILE exclude patterns listed in FILE --include=PATTERN don++t exclude files matching PATTERN --include-from=FILE don++t exclude patterns listed in FILE --version print version number --daemon run as a rsync daemon --no-detach do not detach from the parent --address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address --config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file --port=PORT specify alternate rsyncd port number --blocking-io use blocking IO for the remote shell --no-blocking-io turn off --blocking-io --stats give some file transfer stats --progress show progress during transfer --log-format=FORMAT log file transfers using specified format --password-file=FILE get password from FILE --bwlimit=KBPS limit I/O bandwidth, KBytes per second --read-batch=PREFIX read batch fileset starting with PREFIX --write-batch=PREFIX write batch fileset starting with PREFIX -h, --help show this help screen
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chucker
 
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2006-01-18, 11:13

Quote:
Originally Posted by dfiler
rsync might be what you're looking for. It is a command line tool for syncronizing files remotely.

rsync is an incredibly efficient way to check-on and transfer only the modified drive sectors of modified files. Truly mind blowing if you undertand what it's doing.
Hmm, as I understood him, he wanted to see differences, not sync.
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Kickaha
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2006-01-18, 11:16

Yes. Add -n to the options list of rsync, and it doesn't actuall sync, it just shows you the differences.

Hefty tool for that though.
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chucker
 
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2006-01-18, 11:18

Oh, right, I forgot about the "dry run" feature.
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PKIDelirium
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Join Date: Oct 2005
 
2006-01-18, 11:26

Every wire is protected on my surge protector.

Incoming coaxial cable goes through the surge protector.

Incoming phone wire goes through the protector.

Incoming power is through the protector.

Everything hooked up on this desk is through the protector.

20 bucks at Lowes.
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Banana
is the next Chiquita
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
 
2006-01-18, 11:35

Everything through one protector?

Not really that effective, I think. In my house, there's a protector that's dedicated to phone lines, and I'm under the impression that they are better than consumer surge protector that comes with phone jack, (though you could run it through the consumer protector for extra protection), and are best when with a separate protector for the electrical wiring, and maybe another one for coaxial.

At least that's what the manufacturer wants me to believe.
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dfiler
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Pittsburgh
 
2006-01-18, 11:50

For a group of electronic devices wired together in close physical proximity, a singe point of protection, a surge firewall so to speak, is the best solution.

However, you're right in that cheap/all-purpose protectors typically aren't of as good quality as specialized ones.

My solution has been: All devices in my hometheater run through a single surge protection box. All devices hooked to my computer in the other room also have their own single surge protection device. The two protected systems are connected by networking and AV cables but no cables bypass the surge "firewall" on either end.
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Kickaha
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Join Date: May 2004
 
2006-01-18, 13:07

Yeah, don't forget to get a phone or cable protector as well for DSL or cable modem. (I omitted that little bit once, and a strike fried my DSL modem, router, AirPort, and Enet port on the server mobo. I was damned lucky it stopped there.)

Luckily, a simple ground on a phone line will *usually* do the trick. About $8 at Radio Shack for a line protector.
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Brad
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
 
2006-01-21, 15:24

Note: I've split off this tangent from the original thread since it has taken a life of its own.
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ast3r3x
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2006-01-21, 16:58

We use an APC protector for our main-computing area…although that doesn't seem really brilliant considering out cable for our cable modem isn't protected and that is networked to everything.

Speaking of power fluxes we HAD to get a surge protector for our one Asanté hub or else it would stop working and you'd have to leave it unplugged for hours.
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