Disaster Safe Drives

By Greg McNevin

June 11, 2008: ioSafe has just introduced a new line of 3.5” hard drives that it says are disaster-proof – a first for the industry.

ioSafe says the drives are the first internal hard drives rated to protect data from fire and full immersion in water. They can be deployed and used exactly like any other industry-standard 3.5-inch disk drive.

With most small businesses having no disaster recovery plans, the drive could represent a good last line of defence against data loss should mother nature intervene in daily operations.

The drive uses 2.5” notebook drives inside a specially built 3.5” casing that protects from both fire and water thanks to the firm’s “DataCast endothermic insulation technology”.

ioSafe says this material forms a chemical bond with water molecules which releases water vapour to cool the internal drive should outside temperatures top 70 degrees Celsius. When combined with insulation, the company claims that the drive can shrug off external temperatures of up to 950 degrees Celsius in short bursts, and 800 degrees for 15 minutes.

“The ioSafe 3.5 series represents an entirely new direction for the data storage industry,” said Robb Moore, CEO of ioSafe. “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.”

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