Case Study:
What could be the reason if a hard disk seem to develop bad sectors every 6 months. This has happened for years now. But a UPS has fixed it.Laptop hard drives won't be affected by a power fluctuation but are affected by being moved around. The failure rate for laptop hard drives is horrendous.
One thing to look out for is A/C's. The motor on A/C units can play havoc with any kind of magnetic storage. There was a famous case of a shop that found itself getting a 30% return rate on floppy disks. When it moved them away from the A/C unit in the storeroom the failure rate returned to normal.
A surge protector is almost worthless, as is a surge protector with a battery back up. You need one with a voltage regulator as well so that if the voltage drops to 90V or goes up to 145V temporarily, your delicate electronics aren't hosed. Hard drives are the first things to go, especially with low voltages which are also known as 'brownouts'.
This one here drives one computer and various equipment but could probably drive two. You can get them in various capacities depending on how much juice your system requires and how long you need to run it to shut everything down gracefully if the power goes out. There are also pure voltage regulators available without battery backup.
A/C, flourscent lights, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, waxing machines -- all these things can hose your equipment. If you have any of these things possibly on the same circuit as your gear, you need an APS and even if you dons't you need an APS anyway. It is an essential part of your setup that can not be neglected.
