I'm sure that I'm not the first one to wait until they have experienced a disaster before they went out and purchased a UPS for their system. I had someone pull out the plug on my surge supressor / power strip a few minutes before the start of a performance that I was recording on location. I managed to get everything back up and running in time to catch the start of the show and that evening's recording went smoothly. But days later I learned that a prior recording, still stored on the machine's other hard drive was now toast. Live and learn.....
While reading up on the different types of UPS systems, I learned that the "online" (always on battery supply) version might be better than the "line interactive" (monitors situation and switches to battery when necessary). But I couldn't find an online version that wasn't grossly oversized (and expensive) for the single hard disk recorder that I plan on running off of it. I ended up with a rackmount Tripp-Lite line interactive product, the SmartPro 450.
One spec that shows up on line interactive models that is not applicable to online versions is the switchover or transfer time. (the time it takes to switch over to battery power after it has detected some sort of power problem. My unit is listed at 2 to 4 milliseconds, but I don't have any idea of that is adequate or if its long enough to make the UPS an expensive boat anchor? Anyone out there have a clue about this stuff?
Thanks!