ioSafe releases first fire and waterproof hard drives

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 11 June 2008 08:50

Opinion and Analysis

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.