Don’t lose your photos to fires or looters: ioSafe’s the solution
Despite your tedious backup efforts to protect your precious family photos and videos, fires, floods and even looters can take these memories away. There is a solution – the ioSafe Solo, a disaster-proof external hard drive.
At the moment, BC is the hottest place in Canada. With record breaking temperatures – and some places experiencing temperatures above 40 – the heat wave has also increased wildfire risks throughout the Province, with several areas being given evacuation orders due to nearby fires.
Photo by Eggs&Beer (Flickr)
Being forced to leave your home, with the risk of it burning down while you’re away, is stressful enough. But what if, when the evacuation order was called off, you go home only to find your house – still standing but ransacked; your personal possessions looted through, your electronics stolen. Wouldn’t happen? People wouldn’t be so ignorant in such a time of crisis? Tell that to the Kelowna evacuees who returned home only to find their houses broken into and their stuff stolen. Sure, computers, TV’s and stereo’s can be replaced, but what about the irreplaceable, invaluable keepsakes, such as your precious family photos that you had on your laptop or the home videos of your child’s first birthday stored on your external hard drive.
Sadly, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll soon find myself in a similar position. As I write this, helicopters are flying overhead, dropping water on several small fires that sparked to life after a lightning strike yesterday afternoon. Though I think they have most of them under control, I find myself preparing for the worst; taking a mental inventory on what to pack if we’re only given a brief moments notice to clear out. One thing I don’t need to worry about is my irreplaceable digital photos and family videos. My house can burn down (God forbid!), be flooded by firefighters’ hoses or looted by people without a conscience, but I can rest assured that none of my data will be stolen or corrupt. How? I own a couple of ioSafe Solo hard drives and have all photos and videos backed up onto them. What makes an ioSafe different from other external hard drives? They are fireproof, waterproof and can be bolted down to a desk or floor, making them theft-proof as well. In fact, I just received my second ioSafe Solo today. I thought the knock on the door may be the fire department, and was extremely relieved when it was just the delivery man. At least now, if it comes time to evacuate my family and pets, there’s one less thing I need to worry about.
The cost of an ioSafe Solo ranges from $149 for a 500GB to $300 for a 1.5TB external hard drive. Though these are somewhat pricier than your average hard drive, I think the slightly higher cost is worth the comfort these hard drives provide. The company has put together a video that shows them torching an ioSafe and submerging it in a swimming pool – the video was shown at the 2009 CES Show in Las Vegas and can be seen here.
So, what do you think? Is paying a little extra worth the assurance of knowing your photos are safe, or do you think you’re better off taking the risk and saving your money?
[Disclosure: My husband works for ioSafe]
I think anything physical has the chance for a malfunction. I mean they say it’ll survive a fire, but I don’t know if I’d risk it. Do you really want to worry about unscrewing your hard drive when you could just pick yours up now if an evacuation came? Besides, if a thief can break into your home, they probably have the ability to pry it off of your desk.
I think cloud computing is the way to go. I use Mozy’s free service, but I don’t have a lot to back up. If you really need 1.5tb of storage I don’t know how much that’d cost, but that sounds like a heck of a lot of photos to me. As a bonus, your information will be accessible anywhere, like gramma’s place, which is a lot easier than unbolting it every time.
I’d be a bigger believer if the HDD itself was solid state. Worst case, I’m trying to see it survive the 2 story fall to cement floor in my basement if the place burn down. Making backup copies to DVD and getting those to a safety deposit box at the local band seems to make more sense.
Yah, but it’d be a pain in the butt. Gotta say, I’d prolly be too lazy to do it and I suspect a lot of other people would be too. The ioSafe seems like a pretty good option to me … especially if you use something like Mozy to get a second copy of your most important stuff online.
[...] ago. I generally try to backup my files onto an external hard drive or USB drive once a week. The ioSafe or any other stable hard drive will be a wise [...]