[X4U] OT: Belkin UPS (definitive answer)

[Ken Presley]

Hello Neil, and all. I can almost certainly tell you the problem with 
your Belkin UPS.

And that is that one of the batteries has a bad cell. For instance, when 
one of the cells of a 12 volt sealed-lead-acid UPS battery goes south, 
the battery will measure about 10.5 volts instead of its usual 12 or 13. 
Now unfortunately, many of the Belkin UPS's have let us say an "unusual" 
design and do NOT warn you beforehand that a cell is going south. The 
cell in the battery just drops out and the Belkin UPS is designed to 
just shut off immediately. (I am not a hardware designer, but maybe it's 
power supply could tolerate a lower voltage for a short period of time 
or employ a capacitor to enable something graceful to happen. At least 
the UPS software could maybe warn you ahead of time?) But no, when a 
cell drops the Belkin UPS's just go belly up. It has happened to me and 
one of my associates and we measured the batteries in both instances and 
saw first-hand the bad-cell low voltage. Now of course most of what the 
others have said on this list is also true, and that UPS batteries only 
have a limited lifetime (maybe two to four years).

Now mind you I am not really slamming all Belkin UPS's, they work well 
as long as you keep track of the battery life (sounds like you probably 
had a defective battery from the start). I just am not a fan of the 
design (hardware or software) that causes the UPS to immediately shut 
off with no warning of any kind when a cell goes bad inside of a battery.

If the batteries are meant to be replaced and/or you are comfortable 
with repairs (be very careful of all sources of voltage and amperage!) 
you can simply go to www.batteries.com or some such site and order 
replacement batteries to install into the UPS and save yourself some 
money. (I just replaced two 12 volt 7 amp batteries in a 
meant-to-be-nonreplacable Belkin UPS for about twelve dollars each plus 
six dollars shipping). (Even though only one battery was bad I just 
saved myself some further aggravation and replaced them both at the same 
time).

I hope this helps you and others that run into this Belkin (and maybe 
other brands) UPS bug-a-boo!

- Ken Presley