Water is a pretty common cause of electronics damage.
Considering the large dimensions of the case (7 11/16"H x 4 1/2"W x 11 1/4"D) it should be relatively safe from magnets. Typical household magnets, at least.
Quoted from the stats:
ETL verified 1/2-hour fire protection for up to 1550° F
so yes it can take the heat, as for the ceiling falling, someome made mention of a video of it taking abuse then still working, so check that out.
Yes, and of course the most common cause of damage is probably lightning strikes. A direct strike to a power line will fry a device that’s plugged into a surge protector (happened to me), and probably even a battery backup. That’s probably why they didn’t opt for AC power - as a USB device, this is quite safe.
Geez folks, just place your standard external HDD in a firebox from WalMart after backing up. The fireboxes are cheap and can store some paper documents as well… and maybe those gold coins too!
See my earlier post about real-time backup. And how much does a standard hard drive and a fireproof box cost?
I spent so long working on that dang time machine for nothing!.. if only it had worked, I could go back and not waste my time on it!
Edited: You can’t block magnetic fields but it turns out you can cancel them out or reroutte them with expensive materials.
Fireproof water safes at Walmart start at $54. I can see what you’re saying, but if it’s easier to have the backup attached to the computer (e.g. for files, not disk images) all the time rather than disconnect/reconnect all the time, the time saved may be worth it.
so…as long as my house burns for only 30 minutes it’ll be okay?
What kind of magnetic fields are we talking about, that are going to damage a hard drive, and one that’s sealed in a case, at that? Superheroes convention?
Also people, hard drives these days are extremely resistant to damage by magnet. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but modern hard drives require much higher magnetic fields to realign the bits on a drive than they used to.
At work I have a VERY powerful magnet just laying my desk and I work on computers all the time, with the hard drives in and out of them. Never been a problem.
Should probably still move the magnet, but it’s kind of…attached itself…
It’s fireproof because the material inside either
-Conducts heat extremely poorly
-Expands and forms a “crust” that conducts heat extremely poorly
I think that’s kind of the definition of fireproof when it comes to safes and stuff. What you’re thinking of in inflamable, which means it won’t catch on fire.
A 640Gb WD Blue or Black Series is about $65 on sale @ NewEgg and the fireboxes run from about $15 to $40. A 160Gb 2.5" runs about $40 on sale.
I am OK with daily backup as opposed to totally real-time backup. I don’t want to lose 15 years of data, but if I lost 1 day I could live with that.
$21.97 >> http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=882239&findingMethod=rr
Fires require material to burn. Usually it won’t have enough to burn hot enough long enough.
I’m no expert, but from all I’ve read 1 hour is preferable, but 30 minutes I guess should still be fine.
If your power supply frys and takes the USB bus with it, it might fry the hard drive. Or if you get a lightning strike. Or if a virus infects all the files on the drive.
A company, forgot the name, had an ONLINE backup system. Someone hacked into their systems, deleted all their information, and then deleted everything on their backup system too.
Backup systems should be plugged in ONLY when backing up, and even then there should be two of them in case the computer fries while backing up. Of course, that’s only if you REALLY care about your data. If you only kind of care, one will be fine.
Edit: Unless you require a constant backup if everything you do is important. Then you should have both a real-time and offline backup
EditedIn a perfect world you shouldn’t store your backups in the same physical location as your original data. What if someone stole your computer and that nice USB hard drive you had plugged into it?
A perfect, more time-intensive solution would be to buy a 1 terabyte drive for the same price, buy a 30 dollar enclosure (or not if you don’t mind opening up your system) and keep it at work. Bring it home when you want to do a backup. Encrypted of course.
If this is too much work and would stop you from doing regular backups than this is a good product.
SSD’s actually have a higher failure rate than normal hard drives. I don’t trust SSDs and neither do companies (yet, and except for places where you can spend crazy money for crazy performance)
I can source this if someone wants it but I’m too lazy tonight.
Personally, laziness/busyness. I have online and backup right by the computer, but I don’t typically remember to get the backup over to the fire-safe or to work (I back up nightly, takes 45 minutes on one slow drive, 5 minutes on the other), encrypted-I agree. I do have fire-safes, but they’re stuffed with everything else non-computer. I might buy this (it does allow the encryption option) for the sake of saving time.
You’re right. This is far better than nothing at all. If the hassle of having to move your hard drives back and forth between locations stops you from doing backups, then this is a good solution.
For you guys that think that size is important Amazon has a 250GB QA0005 for $119
I’ve had a house fire, it’s worse than a flood. And a hurricane took my roof and the rain ruined everything in the house. The humidity was horrible and we had no power in both cases.
I suppose there are other ways to do data protection but convenience is worth a lot, if it’s not convenient it won’t get done. I wish this was a NAS but for the money it’ll do. Security where I work would not like me packing drives in and out.