Ways to Protect HDD from Power Outages?

[computingandrebooting]

Hello,

I recently had an HDD fail, I assume that this was most likely due to persistent power outages. I live in an off grid situation, my electricity is strictly solar power. I have a relatively small battery bank so my power usually shuts off around 3am and starts up again in the morning.

I always leave my hard drive plugged into my blue ray player and stream movies or shows, and fall asleep with them playing. But now after loosing so many files I am looking for a way to better protect my HDD in the future. The last external HDD was a 1tb toshiba, it was powered strictly by the USB port. I have now bought a new 3tb WD MYBOOK which is powered by a cable to the wall jack, rather than usb.

So my question, is there a device I can plug into the wall that will protect my new HDD? Maybe something that will retain energy long enough to let the HDD power down normally, rather than abruptly?

Any advice is appreciated, Thank you.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, an Uninterruptible Power Supply, AKA UPS.

This will allow the drive or system to run for a whole. However, it is just a battery pack. Eventually, some human has to turn the system OFF before the USP runs out of power.


A better solution is to turn the system OFF when you're not using it, or have it turn OFF automatically after xx minutes of idle.

Falling asleep with things running...and power shutting off at random...in an off grid situation, you won't have enough battery to completely prevent drive corruption.

Secondarily....backups. A drive that is a backup, and is actually OFF...cannot be corrupted, no matter what happens with your house power.