ioSafe SoloPRO: Disaster Proofing Your Storage Needs
by Ganesh T S on April 9, 2012 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- IT Computing
- ioSafe
There is very little to not like about the ioSafe SoloPRO. It has received universal praise from all quarters for solving one of the important issues in protecting data storage media. The technology behind the units looks quite solid, and the important fact is that ioSafe currently has a track record of recovering its customers' data 99.9904% of the time. I have seen various reviews pointing to the weight and noise of the unit as drawbacks, but I don't believe they are that much of an issue in the market which ioSafe is targeting with this product.
The necessity to protect one's data from fire and water damage can't be overstressed. For small amounts of data, an online backup service should suffice. However, this is not practical when large amounts of data are involved. Many small and medium businesses continue to remain paranoid about cloud storage. In such circumstances, solutions like those provided by ioSafe are the best bet.
For the consumers, ioSafe seems to be the only game in town for disaster proof storage. The good news is that the lack of competition hasn't kept ioSafe from innovating and trying to bring down the cost of their units.
For ioSafe, the issue is not about market competition, but more about consumer awareness. Most users don't realise the need for disaster proof storage until it is too late. That said, the rise in popularity of online backups means that ioSafe has to be able to provide more storage and multi-disk configurations in their enclosures to the end users quite soon. We do have some other suggestions also for ioSafe:
- There is not much protection against mechanical drive failures. Even in the case that forensic data recovery is able to retrieve the data, availability takes a hit. Some sort of multi-drive configuration with a RAID-1 or higher array needs to come to the market.
- In addition to local storage units, NAS configurations would be a good addition to the offerings. In fact, I do see that ioSafe used to offer local RAID configurations and NAS configurations in a tie-up with ReadyNAS. Strangely, I see no mention of this in the current ioSafe site. It would be interesting to see how ioSafe reinvents its offerings in this area. That said, SoloPRO units can always be hooked up to an appropriate NAS and the drive mapped on the network for use as a disaster proof backup.
- In my initial correspondence with ioSafe, I had made it a point to enquire about their reasons for not going with enterprise class drives. ioSafe pointed me to an article suggesting that there is not much difference between the consumer and enterprise drives in terms of reliability. I am convinced about ioSafe's approach, but it is quite possible that some consumers might want enterprise class drives inside their units.
- ioSafe has some interesting patents lined up, such as the one for disaster proofing a storage device which can be used in a standard PC chassis drive bay. It would be interesting to see if ioSafe can bring a standard drive bay sized disaster proof storage module for use in PCs.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
34 Comments
View All Comments
ant6n - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
Most of the inventions related to cooling the drive while fire/water-proofing will be moot once SSDs get cheaper. Maybe they should focus on finding ways to redundantly store data in SSDs in a fire/water proofed way.ganeshts - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
ioSafe has a disaster proof SSD solution also. Why do you think fire/water proofing is not necessary for SSDs?bji - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
I think you misunderstood the comment.The comment was that COOLING THE DRIVE is not necessary for an SSD which makes it easier to develop fire/water proof solutions based on SSDs.
The comment was NOT that fire/water proofing is not necessary for SSDs.
B-Unit1701 - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
I would imagine that is the basis for the internal drive plugged at the end of the article. A standard sized SSD in a 5/12" vault.PostToaster - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
bji -
Mmh didn't misunderstand your comment. You mis-wrote it. You should have said "trivial" instead of "moot". They mean different things.
robb.moore - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
Hi bjl-Cooling electronics is always important as HDDs, like SSDs, all generate heat. SSDs generally do generate less heat than HDDs at idle but when operating - they both use about 4-5W of energy. Even 1W in a small enough enclosure can get incredibly hot if insulated.
ioSafe technology is about how to built a heat generating computer in a perfectly insulated box. It's tricky to do both at a price point that everyone can afford. Thanks for your comments!
-Robb
Robb Moore
CEO
ioSafe
Samus - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
I agree. 5-watt SSD's get pretty hot, you can't just put them in an air-tight enclosure. I've read a number of stories involving OCZ's drives (among the highest wattage drives) failing in laptops, especially older Thinkpad's that were designed for 4200RPM drives.g00ey - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
I'm still concerned about the integrity of data storage. It is a well known fact that storage devices are prone to failure no matter how fire- and waterproof you make them. This means that some form of redundancy is required and at the moment only ZFS can deliver proper protection against data corruption.File systems such as BrtFS and HammerFS look promising but it will take years until they can deliver the same data integrity protection as ZFS currently does.
robb.moore - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
Agreed - redundant copies of the data is VERY important. (See 3-2-1 Backup in the comments further down.)The simple choice with ioSafe is that if you're going to buy an external hard drive anyway...would you like the RED hard drive or the FIREPROOF WATERPROOF hard drive for your data.
-Robb
Robb Moore
CEO
ioSafe
JNo - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
Off site cloud storage (as well as onsite secondary backup system) is surely the way to go? Onsite backup can burn down too but one or more cloud systems are unlikely to go down simultaneously. Now if only it was cheap enough to back up my movie collection as well as my documents :)