Will a hard drive survive in a fire resistant safe?

Question

I've been working with a friend trying to come up with a way to backup his important data. He's wanting to put a flash drive or portable drive in a fire safe. I'm thinking the temperature in the safe, while not enough to damage paper, will damage the delicate electronics in a flash drive or warp the platters on a hard drive.

I've suggested instead of storing it in a fire safe, to take it to work. That way it's off site. Or maybe to sign up for an online storage account.

What do you all think?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

There are different levels of fire safe protection. Most of the consumer grade fire safes (the kind you see in office supply stores) are only rated safe for paper. Most kinds of digital media won't survive.

Google "media fire safe" and you'll see tons of different options. Here's one example that's rated up to 1700F for 1 hour.

Offsite backups are really the way to go.

Answer 2

The saying is:

"Nothing is backed up until it exists at two distinct geographic locations"

Answer 3

I put my vital files on Amazon's S3 service for backups.

Work's a decent option, but if you get laid off you risk a) not getting it back and b) having them look at it all before they do give it back.

Answer 4

From my experience solid state storage devices like flash drives are not as sensitive as they seam, I have washed and dried more then one flash drive, having forgotten it in a pair of pants.
I also spent 8 Years as a computer tech and, again from my experience, typical spindle based hard drives are not nearly sensitive to heat as they are to (altering polarity) magnitisim, and physical damage (i.e. gravity).

But the best solution is off-site, backups preferably at multipul locations, I do like online backups and have not had any problems with them thus far.

Answer 5

The primary issue that I see with backing up to Solid State Devices is that they will eventually reach their read/write limit and just die with absolutely no warning whatsoever.

Answer 6

you can also get a MIL-STD 810E (Method 501.3) compliant drive, just to be on the safe side.

Answer 7

Here's a fire-resistant safe that not only claims to be rated for a hard drive (1850F for two hours) but also has a slot designed to fit a 2.5" hard drive and has a USB port on the front to connect to it, so that you won't have to go through the hassle of backing up to the hard drive and then storing the hard drive in the safe - the hard drive is already in the safe.

http://www.sentrysafe.com/products/productDetail.aspx?s=278

Here's a gadget podcast episode that discusses it

http://www.twit.tv/dgw471

Note that I have not used it myself so I am not vouching for it or anything, just pointing out that it exists. I'm personally curious how it is that a USB slot leading to a wire going inside the safe does not pose a fire entry threat itself, but I don't know anything about how fire really operates so for all I know this is fine.

Answer 8

The primary issue that I see with backing up to Solid State Devices is that they will eventually reach their read/write limit and just die with absolutely no warning whatsoever.

Magnetic storage drives fail "with absolutely no warning whatsoever" too - it's the entire reason behind the need for RAID. Also, SSD drives don't lose all their sectors at once - individual sectors have read/write limits, and the drive works around failed ones.

Answer 9

Read/write limits on SSDs haven't been a problem in a while. Most good stuff will have read/write balancing built in and will make death by read/write something that won't happen within any reasonable time.

Honestly, I wouldn't trust vital data to any kind of fire safe, even one rated for high temps. Offsite backups in multiple locations is the only way to go.

Answer 10

If by eventually you mean hundreds of years with new SSDs then yes they will reach their read/write limit eventually.