getting a UPS to shut down an external drive

November 16, 2005 7:46 PM

If I have a power cut when I'm not at my computer, my UPS will keep my computers running until Windows can close down automatically and gracefully. But how do I get my Maxtor network storage to shut down? The UPS interface allows windows to call software before it closes...what software do I call to close my drive down? Or is the drive safe if it has its power cut off?
posted by krunk to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Is the drive connected to the computer? You say it's "network storage", which gives me the impression that it's just connected to the network, and not a computer, right?

If that's the case I don't think there is much you can do to get the UPS to shut it down.

If it's connected to your computer, on the other hand, the proper shutdown of your computer should stop any data access that is going on with the drive, so when the power is cut, it shouldn't cause any damage (because the drive will just spin down, but won't have the heads bouncing around accessing data)...
posted by twiggy at 7:57 PM on November 16, 2005

With an enterprise-class UPS (one that also attaches to the network for monitoring), I'd imagine your NAS device could use an SNMP trap to detect the power failure and do a more graceful shutdown.

Lacking a UPS with SNMP support, it should be possible to have a program running that monitors your computers' event logs for a power loss notification, and then generates the appropriate SNMP notification.

This, of course, assumes that your Maxtor NAS device supports SNMP at all, and if it's geared towards the home market rather than business, it likely does not.

That having been said, the only damage done by a sudden shutdown would be done to files that were in the middle of being written to disk.

Of course, you could just plug the storage device into the UPS. Once your PC shuts down, the battery should supply enough power to keep a few hard drives spinning for several hours. Plus, even if it does lose power, since your PC shut off first, you wouldn't have to worry about data corruption from interrupted writes.
posted by CrayDrygu at 8:07 PM on November 16, 2005

Assuming all the computers that were using the drive get shut down by the outage, then powering the drive off is harmless. The only issue is having half-written files from some computer that was in the act of writing when the drive is shut off.
posted by knave at 8:10 PM on November 16, 2005

Excellent, thanks for the fast response!
posted by krunk at 8:16 PM on November 16, 2005

You're quite welcome :)

Since it's related, let me add that your next step (depending on what's on that Maxtor device) should be figuring out a backup scheme for it, in case the thing really does fail, which Things With Moving Parts are apt to do.
posted by CrayDrygu at 8:50 PM on November 16, 2005

That's an interesting point -- I think it currently serves as the backup system for my dad's LAN (I posted the question on his behalf).

I wonder if he does backups for the backup... could go on forever!
posted by krunk at 9:54 AM on November 17, 2005