Back UPS RS 1300LCD

[BillP]

The RS 1300LCD is the last UPS I will ever buy from APC.

An APC UPS, when the battery fails, is literally worse than nothing. This model is no different. This morning, I found the battery charge indicator empty and flashing. The battery fault light was not on, neither was the UPS on battery. The manual says nothing about this particular combination. I reinstalled the nearly useless PCPE (useless because you can't get it to run commands before shutting down) and it told me the battery was disconnected, which it wasn't. Everything was up, so I assumed that the battery was faulty after 3.5 years and started looking for a new one. Periodically, PCPE dutifully told me in between calculations of my carbon footprint that the battery had reconnected or disconnected. A few hours later, the UPS shut off without warning and started whining. I turned it back on, and two hours later it was off again. So APC has put my data at risk twice today for absolutely no reason, because we haven't had any power surges or outages today. I'm hoping that no permanent damage has occurred to my files or email databases.

3.5 years is a reasonable lifetime for a battery; I have no issue with that. I have issue with the failure modes of APC hardware and software that have persisted for DECADES:

- Hardware that shuts down itself or its loads without warning on the tiniest power blip instead of going into bypass when the battery functions have failed. These are tiny, tiny sags that the power supplies of hardware NOT attached to the UPS handles just fine... somehow, the UPS does something nasty to its loads to cause them to fail.
- Software that begins OS shutdown when the cable connection is lost, or for no apparent reason at all (like when the server is booting up, requiring a boot into safe mode to disable all the services)

Until these long-time faults in design are corrected, I'll take my business elsewhere.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi Stephen,

I apologize for the inconvenience that this problem has caused you. Based from your description, what the software tells you is right. Those indicators, flashing empty battery icon indicates that there is a battery disconnected fault/error. Although the battery is physically connected, it is possible that the internal component of the UPS that detects the presence of the battery has failed. If this was the case, the resolution would be replacing the UPS itself.