Saving on the electric bill and fear of fire.

How does unplugging an appliance that is turned off save on the electric bill?

many appliances use small amounts of power when turned off

I have an electric doorbell. Should I flip the breaker when I'm not expecting company?

I have an electric doorbell. Should I flip the breaker when I'm not expecting company?

If you have an illuminated bell push it's likely drawing 15mA @ 12V (0.2W) which will cost you about 7 Baht a year.

UP2U.

Now you have me considering removing the batteries from the wife's vibrator when she is not using it!

How many baht per year will that save me?

The reason given to me by Thai people in my village is that Thailand has many storms and very much lightning and the lightning can destroy the appliances. I did not initially believe this.....until my DVD recorder was zapped and completely destroyed during an overnight storm. We have all seen the overhead power distribution lines in this country. Not a good idea for many reasons. However, on subsequent inspection, I could not find any surge protection on these lines which means that if lightning strikes the overhead wires, the full voltage of the lightning is delivered to houses. Even though my Safe T Cut operated and cut all the power to my house, it obviously was fast enough to protect the Recorder and just a few milli-seconds of this voltage destroyed it. The Safe T Cut was fast enough to protect all my other electrical equipment. That is the reason Thai people unplug.

Are you earthed up, a Safe 'T' cut should be OK if set right, you can get independent surge protectors for computers and other sensitive equipment.

Our electrical system has been fine, if your concerned at all ask on DIY forum.

I'm a qualified electrical engineer and I know what SHOULD be. I related what ACTUALLY happened.

The reason given to me by Thai people in my village is that Thailand has many storms and very much lightning and the lightning can destroy the appliances. I did not initially believe this.....until my DVD recorder was zapped and completely destroyed during an overnight storm. We have all seen the overhead power distribution lines in this country. Not a good idea for many reasons. However, on subsequent inspection, I could not find any surge protection on these lines which means that if lightning strikes the overhead wires, the full voltage of the lightning is delivered to houses. Even though my Safe T Cut operated and cut all the power to my house, it obviously was fast enough to protect the Recorder and just a few milli-seconds of this voltage destroyed it. The Safe T Cut was fast enough to protect all my other electrical equipment. That is the reason Thai people unplug.

Are you earthed up, a Safe 'T' cut should be OK if set right, you can get independent surge protectors for computers and other sensitive equipment.

Our electrical system has been fine, if your concerned at all ask on DIY forum.

I'm a qualified electrical engineer and I know what SHOULD be. I related what ACTUALLY happened.

Well !! You didn't sound like one so just trying to help.

Now you have me considering removing the batteries from the wife's vibrator when she is not using it!

How many baht per year will that save me?

images (1).jpg

Bigger problem, is that I believe they are illegal in Thailand and people get arrested for having them. Appartently they don't want Thai ladies to be satisfied by them selves.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/727042-pattaya-to-clamp-down-on-vendors-and-peddlers-on-beach-road/

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/63364-crackdown-on-viagra-and-sex-performance-aids/

Thank you for starting this forum.  My blood is hotter than a climate changed summer because, at my workplace, the cleaning ladies comply to turn off the power strip which causes me to lose important work on my computer. I just complained to management and they cited that "it's policy" despite NO logically explanation as to why we keep the refrigerator powered on 24/7, but turn off the computers. This a serious problem because if you kill the electricity on a computer enough, you will cause irreversible damage to the hard-drive. 

 

Has anyone had success at influencing policy at their workplace? If so, what did you do? 

Is this a record for jacking an old topic?  

If "managment" feels that it's more important to cut off power than save your computer work, then that's it.  Put in a request for a UPS and see how that goes.  BTW: power cuts won't damage the drive; they could result in lost or damaged data but the hardware will be uneffected.

1 hour ago, bankruatsteve said:

BTW: power cuts won't damage the drive; they could result in lost or damaged data but the hardware will be uneffected.

Not true.

 

With sudden loss of power the heads will not have time to park and will drop down on the spinning disk causing damage.

 

You may get away with it a few times, with just data loss, but it's not good practice, in the long run it's better to buy a UPS than constantly replacing disks.

 

 

 

 

1 minute ago, Daffy D said:

Not true.

 

With sudden loss of power the heads will not have time to park and will drop down on the spinning disk causing damage.

 

You may get away with it a few times, with just data loss, but it's not good practice, in the long run it's better to buy a UPS than constantly replacing disks.

 

 

 

 

Not sure what drive you are familiar with, but parking the heads on power failure is 40 year old technology.

15 minutes ago, bankruatsteve said:

Not sure what drive you are familiar with, but parking the heads on power failure is 40 year old technology.

OK I will concede that it's been some years since I was working in that field  but not 40 years

 

So how do how does it work these days with a power failure?

 

One of my disks that failed:-

Well, I might be a decade off.  I started working for leading disk drive mfg. in 1971 until I retired in 2003.  Safely parking the heads was in design late 80's to my best recollection.  That photo looks like a 30 year old drive to me.  ????

 

11 minutes ago, Daffy D said:

OK I will concede that it's been some years since I was working in that field  but not 40 years

 

So how do how does it work these days with a power failure?

 

One of my disks that failed:-

In general if the drive is not currently being accessed and has been a reasonable time since the last access the heads will retract.
 

Of course if the drive is currently reading or writing that doesn’t/may not apply.

 

FWIW the drive you show with a partial cover over the platters is different from all the drives (more than 20) that I’ve disassembled to ensure data is unrecoverable and to salvage the magnets.

Unless I'm getting phantom recall from brain cells I've killed, it's been a long time that a Seagate drive could be opened.

I can't recall how old the drive is but know it's a 2TB Seagate Barracuda and the picture was taken Just about a year ago.

 

So what does happen with a power failure while the disk reading or writing ?

The Barracuda was early 90's and didn't last very long.  I can't remember the exact technique used for emergency parking, but it was very simple (like just using tension/momentum already existing).

11 minutes ago, bankruatsteve said:

Unless I'm getting phantom recall from brain cells I've killed, it's been a long time that a Seagate drive could be opened.

I don’t have the cases of the drives but all of the recently made drives, some were Seagate drives were easy to open with the correct tools. They were, of course, toast after opening as I don’t have clean room facilities.

 

As you can see most use Torx screws, the older ones used socket cap screws as well.

13 minutes ago, bankruatsteve said:

The Barracuda was early 90's and didn't last very long.  I can't remember the exact technique used for emergency parking, but it was very simple (like just using tension/momentum already existing).

The Barracuda name lives on as you can see from the 2016 drive.

2 minutes ago, sometimewoodworker said:

The Barracuda name lives on as you can see from the 2016 drive.

I wonder if it was resurrected?  Back then, new products were being announced about every 6 months and the predecessors quickly faded - from production anyway.

 

While I have never opened a drive, I've seen them put together and recall the HDA being hermetically sealed.  (?)  They didnt want competitors to see the "secret stuff".

Just to reminisce... one of my first part-time jobs with Control Data Corp. (1969) was to assemble the 854 DSD (or something like that).  It was leading technology drive about the size of a washing machine using "SPL cards" for control, it had 5 1M platter stack (removable), heads about the size of a nickel, and crashes while in operation were not uncommon.  Fastest drive on the planet.

All very interesting

BUT what is the actual technology these days to stop the heads from crashing 

1 minute ago, Daffy D said:

All very interesting

BUT what is the actual technology these days to stop the heads from crashing 

I don't know for sure, but think the heads now are so small and held so rigid, they no longer "fly" and cannot crash.

9 minutes ago, bankruatsteve said:

I don't know for sure, but think the heads now are so small and held so rigid, they no longer "fly" and cannot crash.

Hmmm! sounds like a possibility.

 

Someone must know for sure, maybe should ask the question in the IT section 

 

1 hour ago, bankruatsteve said:

 

Ops! 

 

 

1 minute ago, Daffy D said:

So what is the current technology?

 

 

I dunno.  Maybe not even bother to park and just do a "home" on initialization.

25 minutes ago, Daffy D said:

All very interesting

BUT what is the actual technology these days to stop the heads from crashing 

Modern hard drives will have facility to place heads on a parking ramp if power is lost. If the drive fails to do this there is a good chance the head will crash into the platter when the air cushion disappears.  

2 hours ago, Fruit Trader said:

Modern hard drives will have facility to place heads on a parking ramp if power is lost. If the drive fails to do this there is a good chance the head will crash into the platter when the air cushion disappears.

Does not really answer the question. If the power is lost how do the heads get back to the parking ramp? 

 

Solve all the problems use a SSD 

13 minutes ago, Daffy D said:

Does not really answer the question. If the power is lost how do the heads get back to the parking ramp? 

 

Solve all the problems use a SSD 

Stored energy.

2 hours ago, Daffy D said:

Solve all the problems use a SSD 

But not a cheap one as it will die quickly on many repeated writes, Just think how many times the VM files get written.

4 hours ago, Daffy D said:

Does not really answer the question. If the power is lost how do the heads get back to the parking ramp?

From misc sources:

When power fails, the drive motor works as a generator until the disks come to stop.

Generated power is enough to park the heads.