UPS battery lengths?

I believe it's the amount of time the UPS will power the NAS alone. Since mine (BackUPS ES-700uk) has a 42 minutes displayed in frontview but generally only lasts on average about 5 minutes after an outage/test with the main PC (800w PSU) and monitor also connected to the battery backup side. Although I ccould be wrong. The only way to be sure is to do a test, and if you have a Windows PC connected, install WinNUT and have it shut down / hibernate after a set time.

I only have a house of Macs. Is there any way to safely test the rig without a PC? I'm guessing pulling the plug on the UPS would be an...accurate test, but probably not something you want to intentionally do, correct?

OH, I see you were testing with a PC connected. I just have the NAS and a USB hard drive on the UPS. What's the preferred way to test of the UPS with this setup?

jonsenge wrote:
OH, I see you were testing with a PC connected. I just have the NAS and a USB hard drive on the UPS. What's the preferred way to test of the UPS with this setup?

There's a method here that doesn't require a PC: viewtopic.php?f=87&t=64804&p=363141#p363134

The ReadyNAS will automatically interface with the UPS if it's on the supported list, and you have the USB cable plugged into the NAS. I think most of the common APC UPS are supported (if not all). The NAS will determine when it needs to shut itself down and will do so gracefully.

If your 550G shows 476 minutes remaining in Frontview, I'm going to guess you have nothing connected to the battery backup outlets on the UPS. Check closely, some outlets are connected to the battery, some are surge only. Be sure you are connected to the battery side. For an NV+ you should see less than 45 minutes on a 550G (assuming nothing else connected). Reality is it will be even less than that in a real world power outage. Partially because battery discharge is not linear, but also because the UPS electronics take some battery power to keep the inverter running.

I just double checked. I am indeed plugged into the surge protector + battery backup half of the UPS. I do only have the NV+ and a WD USB hard drive plugged into it. I just rechecked FrontView after updating to the latest firmware and I still have 476 minutes indicated.

If you're only showing 45 minutes on your setup, what could mine mean? Is there any way to test a power failure and rely on the battery, and watch the auto shutdown happen? The suggestion above on testing the shutdown doesn't test the battery backup portion of the rig.

jonsenge wrote:

I just double checked. I am indeed plugged into the surge protector + battery backup half of the UPS. I do only have the NV+ and a WD USB hard drive plugged into it. I just rechecked FrontView after updating to the latest firmware and I still have 476 minutes indicated. If you're only showing 45 minutes on your setup, what could mine mean? Is there any way to test a power failure and rely on the battery, and watch the auto shutdown happen? The suggestion above on testing the shutdown doesn't test the battery backup portion of the rig.

Disconnect power and see what happens. Be sure to NOT be writing to the NAS when performing this test. 476 minutes seems odd. Never seen that happen with one I setup.

Tried unplugging as you suggested, and it went straight down to showing 57 minutes, which as it sounds, will end up being even less than that. At what point does the NAS shut down, and presumably, it unmounts any attached USB disks in the process?

In Frontview click SYSTEM > POWER. Here you can set the threshold for UPS shutdown of NAS.