Peripherals
Thinking inside the box to refresh the parts other tips can’t reach
Which to protect with a UPS? Q
I back my iMac up to a Synology NAS, which is now powered from an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to protect it from mains outages. As that UPS has a big enough battery to protect my Mac as well, how can I connect its single USB port to both my Mac and the NAS? byDAVIDHIGNETT
A
Better UPS systems provide one USB connection, which is used to signal the computer they’re supplying power to when its mains supply has failed, and they’re running on battery. This lets the computer shut down automatically, but only works with one device.
When you have two systems, such as networked storage and your Mac, both of which need protection, you can either provide each with its own UPS, connecting them individually via USB, or use an alternative signalling system, such as the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Although macOS does come with built-in support for SNMP, it’s far from user-friendly and unless you particularly enjoy hacking in Terminal it needs a front end, but we’re not aware of anything suitable for a UPS. If you can’t justify a second UPS, then power the system you can’t connect via USB from one of the filtered outputs on your UPS. It’s better to provide your Mac with batterybacked power so it can shut down soon after a power outage, although that leaves the risk that, if it’s backing up to your NAS, the backup could be damaged if power is suddenly lost. The alternative to protecting the NAS would expose your Mac to greater risk instead.