Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 11 June 2008 09:50
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Disaster protection and recovery takes on a whole new meaning with an internal hard drive that can survive full immersion in water and a raging fire, events that could severely damage normal hard drives and subject them to very expensive data recovery procedures - something that is included as standard with ioSafe drives if it's still needed. So how much do these drives cost?!
ioSafe has released the "3.5 series", a range of
hard drives for home and business PCs to data centre servers at a price
that not only seems pretty reasonable for the protection- but also
because it includes up to $2500 in additional data recovery per drive,
if needed.
Designed to be used like any other hard drive, they're being marketed
as an extra insurance policy in an uncertain world, and given they're
the first of its kind, it's pretty impressive.
ioSafe says its new drive is "engineered to protect data from fire (up
to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit or 760 degrees Celsius) and flood (full
immersion in fresh or salt water)."
ioSafe have managed to do this by putting a 2.5-inch hard drive into a
3.5-inch disk enclosure, making the size compatible with 3.5-inch drive
bays. The space between the 3.5-inch enclosure and the 2.5-inch drive
is where the ioSafe protection against fire and water technology lies,
while also "resolving heat dissipation issues found in all computer
systems."
The protection is question features a "FloSafe cooling vent technology
provides air-flow cooling to dissipate heat during normal
operation" which can also "detect destructive heat levels and
automatically close the vents to protect data from extreme heat."
There's also "endothermic insulation technology" to further protect
from exteme heat, while a "MirrorGuard" provides a "highly reflective
heat shield to deflect over 98 percent of the radiant heat from a fire,
further protecting critical data."
Next up is "HydroSafe technology" which protects against "fresh or
salt-water damage, including full immersion" while also allowing for
"heat dissipation required by all computer hardware during normal operation."
Robb Moore, CEO of ioSafe said that: "The ioSafe 3.5 series represents
an entirely new direction for the data storage industry. What we're
offering is versatility, simplicity and peace of mind."
Moore continued: "Almost any computer or storage device containing
vulnerable yet critical data can now have the ease of disk storage
combined with our data disaster protection technology and exclusive
Disaster Recovery Service. From small home offices to the largest
enterprise, anyone struggling with backup, disaster recovery, security
and compliance should consider the benefits of ioSafe technology."
Please read on to page 2 for more details of the ioSafe drives and pricing details.
