Waterproof, Fireproof & Theft-Proof Raid Box Runs Eerily Silent
Review by Erik Vlietinck
The ioSafe Duo unit is a hard drive/SSD drive unit for two disks that you can set up in RAID 0, 1, JBOD, or Span. The unit is fireproof, waterproof, and theft-proof. It’s available as an empty box or preloaded with two hard disk drives of 4 TB or 8 TB each. The unit has one USB-A port and one USB-C port at the front, and it connects to your computer through a USB-C type USB 3.2 Gen 2 port on the back. Inside my 8 TB test unit were two Seagate IronWolf disks.
The unit weighs a backbreaking 15 kg (33 lbs) with drives, which is entirely attributable to the fireproof and waterproof materials. Behind the fireproof front door is a waterproof door. A nice effect of this massive physical protection is that the Duo is dead silent.
The Duo resists a temperature of up to 1,550°F for 30 minutes, and ingress from waterjets and submersion in 9′ of water for three days. All of the ports and even the RAID jumpers and fan at the back are exposed, yet they all resist fire and water due to Datacast and HydroSafe technology, both ioSafe patents.
To start with an empty Duo or replace disks, you’ll find a specially designed hex tool in the box that flexes to prevent you from under- or over-tightening the screws, or damaging the waterproof gasket.
The ioSafe Duo is your best bet for a safe local backup and, in my opinion, more secure than cloud backups where you have to take into account a number of issues like exposure to hacking. It’s not very fast, though, at 220 MB/sec max for my test unit. If you fill it up with two SSDs, you should be able to reach speeds of around 400 MB/sec, even in a RAID 1 configuration.
The ioSafe Duo also comes with two years of free data recovery service included. ■
