sulking over powercut

Trazzall · 14 Jun 2007 at 00:06

Had a powercut tonight... grrr... when it all came back i had lost 2x wu's both at 80-90% each..... FREAKIN eck!

Where do they go? Why does it start from zero?

OH and another moan... 200 pointers are freakin killing me... grrrrrrrrr... why dont I get bigger pointers?

MGP · 14 Jun 2007 at 00:27

I can sympathise - my main PC has an unexplained habit of randomly rebooting. Can be fine for a couple of weeks then just reboots. Kills the Win SMP WU. If you've cheesed off with loosing 200 points, what about 1500+ :eek:

SiriusB · 14 Jun 2007 at 00:33

If a PC unexpectedly loses power all sorts of strange things can happen. Namely anything in RAM and currently being worked on by the CPU will be lost. Also, if the CPU is writing to the HDD this will be interrupted and will cause bits to be missing.

The PC reboots, client restarts, looks at its saved data and sees a mess. It goes wtf, throws a wobbly, chucks out the WU because just one mistake can change the results of the experiment - not good for Mr Pande's research - and gets a fresh one.

Sometimes the client may upload what data it has got [and you may receive partial credit], but this doesn't happen very often as in most crashes its hard to determine how much of the data may be corrupt.

lay-z-boy · 14 Jun 2007 at 02:20

One reason why i bought a UPS for all my machines, a belkin 1200VA for my main rig and ocuk value 800VA for my other machines. (£30 each)

Absolute steal and they offer great protection (even ethernet)

SiriusB · 14 Jun 2007 at 02:27

How long do they last if there is a power cut?

Berserker · 14 Jun 2007 at 03:14

Long enough. I have a 1500VA one powering my fileserver, main PC, external HD, monitor and router, and I get about this long out of it...

PS - I'd get more with a new battery - this one is starting to show signs that it'll need replacing, but 26 minutes is plenty for now.

PPS - this UPS is rather more expensive than £30.

shadowscotland · 14 Jun 2007 at 10:22

Highly recomend an ups unit - was using the old office one untill it died a few months ago (was a good 4 years old)

SiriusB · 14 Jun 2007 at 11:19

May consider getting one, but to be honest there has probably been only 2 powercuts in the 21 years I have been living here!

MGP · 14 Jun 2007 at 11:42

I think I'd rather spend the money on more crunching power, than an UPS

Gojira · 14 Jun 2007 at 17:18

SiriusB said:
May consider getting one, but to be honest there has probably been only 2 powercuts in the 21 years I have been living here!

Waits for the bang from SiriusB's substation....

Alan Woodford

oceaness · 14 Jun 2007 at 17:28

Gojira said:
Waits for the bang from SiriusB's substation....

Alan Woodford

Lol you make it sound like SiriusB literally has his own personal power substation...

He's secrectly running a thousand processor super computer for another team!!!

Pilgrim57 · 14 Jun 2007 at 18:13

My brother has 3 to 4 power cuts a year lasting up to 4 hrs.

I got him a Belkin UPS from OcUK & it saved his bacon within 2 months. QED £80 well spent. Lasts about 20 mins & auto shuts down system if you're not around so no data loss

@ MGP the problem with the 200 pointers is no the loss of points but the bloody annoying fact that they take 2 days to crunch

squiffy · 14 Jun 2007 at 18:16

SiriusB said:
May consider getting one, but to be honest there has probably been only 2 powercuts in the 21 years I have been living here!

Some UPS's protect against brown outs and voltage spiked, which you do get quite often.

WoZZeR · 14 Jun 2007 at 18:22

I use a UPS, we get loads of fierce storms here and the power flickers quite a lot, most businesses around here use them as well.

Well worth the pennies, mine was about 100 euros or so.

shadowscotland · 14 Jun 2007 at 18:28

squiffy said:
Some UPS's protect against brown outs and voltage spiked, which you do get quite often.

Shouldn't that all do that :confused:

squiffy · 14 Jun 2007 at 18:30

shadowscotland said:
Shouldn't that all do that

Nope. The cheaper ones just sit there doing nothing until total power failure, which then kick into battery mode. You want a "line interactive" model that monitors the mains and boosts (brown outs) and cuts (over voltage) when it occurs.

APC Back Ups don't have this, and I would guess the cheaper models as well.
The APC Smart line are line interactive.

joeyjojo · 14 Jun 2007 at 23:30

6 hours lost. Damn.

Was really wierd actually. I got home to find everything as normal, breathed a sigh of relief and moved the mouse but the screen stayed blank. Thought "hmm maybe the cable has come out" pushed it in and the system shut down. Very odd indeed.