Very few of my customers properly maintain their UPS, and it's quite common for people to have one or more at home these days too. I'm guessing they're mostly ignored too.

Batteries do not last for ever. It's good practice to recycle them every two years. At the very least, they should be tested regularly. After all, what's the point otherwise? A faulty UPS is actually more likely to cause a power problem than not having one at all!

I have several, and following a power cut on Friday I'm now testing them all. My most important one only lasted 20 seconds, which shows it's need of attention - as did the big red "change battery" light that's been on for two months

I'm also testing the batteries from one that literally exploded in the office. There was acid everywhere, despite it using sealed batteries which are guaranteed leak-proof.

So, do you have a UPS at home? Are you responsible for one or more at work? Any UPS related stories?

At one customer, back in the early 90s, they had an AS/400 connected to a UPS, they'd check the status every month. The problem is, checking the status and actually testing the batteries are two very different things.

The status test reported that the batteries were full and in good condition... Then one fateful day, the power went out and the batteries held for 10 seconds! That cost 2 new hard DASDs - the IBM DASDs (hard disks to you and me) were notorious for getting hot and drying out the bearings during the constant 24/67 usage, which means they tended to cease, once the stopped rotating and cooled.

We have dual UPSs and all servers have dual PSUs, so we cross test them regularly, to make sure the batteries hold. We replaced one set last year.

When I first started working from home, we had a spate of power cuts. This was due to new houses being built with no increase in the infrastructure to cope. If it rained, the power went out. If the wind blew, the power went out. If there was a thunderstorm...

I got a UPS to support my desktop system. All I needed was long enough to shut everything down nicely. It worked well enough. When I upgraded my hardware, I made a conscious decision to go for a laptop. I reasoned the lappy I wanted was powerful enough to be a desktop replacement, and had its own built-in UPS.

Most of our computers are now laptops. We have one desktop PC which Best Beloved uses, rarely. Of course, the power infrastructure has now been upgraded and we don't get as many cuts as we used to. In fact, I can't remember the last one.

The UPS was taken for recycling last year. The batteries had given out.

Our servers have dual PSU's and they are plugged into separate UPS. Most of them are a few years old. The one that does need replacing is the one that one of our LES100 boxes is plugged into for the data link between our 2 buildings.

We've got a backup generator. Does that count? It actually failed to work one time a guy working for Northern water put as pneumatic drill though the electricity main. Wasn't good for us. TBF, was rather worse for him.

Jon