Tuesday, August 26, 2008

ioSafe Chooses Fujitsu Hard Drives

ioSafe offers a fireproof waterproof hard drives and has selected Fujitsu to be the official drive to power their patented technology. The Fujitsu 2.5-inch SATA Hard Disk Drives Prove the Most Resilient and Reliable in Extreme Conditions and ioSafe will integrate Fujitsu for disaster protected external and internal hard drives.

Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., is a leading supplier of computer products including hard disk drives, peripherals and biometric security solution. Fujitsu's mobile HDDs, with up to 320GB(1) capacity, are available in the ioSafe 3.5 series, offering the industry a high performance and expanded capacity drive with a disaster-protected guarantee. The ioSafe 3.5 series certifies fire protection to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes (per the ASTM E119 standard) and water protection from fresh or salt water damage for full immersion at depths up to five feet for 24 hours. ioSafe adds a patented ruggedized casing to the Fujitsu 2.5-inch drive, which can then be deployed and used exactly like any other industry-standard 3.5-inch SATA HDD, but with the added capability of disaster protection.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Media Servers

Easy to use, easy on the budget
For a complete system that can be used as a file server or home media server check out the bundled ioSafe internal hard drives with the Drobo or ReadyNAS network attached storage systems.

NAS Fire Safe Systems

NAS Drives vs. USB Hard Disk Drives

What are the differences between USB drives and Network storage drives? Which is the best hard drive for you?

On the most elemental level, the USB drive simply plugs into a USB 2.0 port on your computer, laptop or server and allows you to back up data directly to the device. This is often called a direct attached storage device. On the other hand a NAS system or drive plugs into your computer or router and can be seen as additional storage by all computers on the network, thus the name Network attached storage.

When it comes to data transfer speeds there are some significant differences between each type of drive and system. USB 2.0 systems average about a 60 - 80 mb/s data transfer rate. This depends on the true connection speed and whether you are in a read mode, write mode or a read/write mode. NAS drives can transfer data up to 1 GB minute. Most of these drives have a 10/100/1000 Mb Ethernet interface allowing for rapid transfer of data across the network. These speeds will of course slow down if you are using a wireless connection.

If you or your business has already invested into a file server then it may be best to attach a USB drive or system directly to the server. Using the fireproof USB from ioSafe will quickly give you extra redundancy and fire and waterproof protection. Another option would be to purchase fire resistant internal hard drives and simply install them inside your existing server or USB storage array.

Another option that offers the most data redundancy and protection would be to bundle a DROBO NAS system or Netgear ReadyNAS. These complete systems start at price points that are very attractive and offer the most bang for the buck when it comes to the small business budget.

For businesses that are looking for common sense answers to seemingly difficult storage questions, let the experts offer you some advice...ask questions, ask for options!

Monday, August 4, 2008

Storage Server for Business

Business data backup and storage consists of several key components including storage capacity, budget, security and integrity of data, reliability of the storage device and digital asset growth.

In today's work office environment a storage server offers many benefits that can help you achieve your goals for smooth IT operations as well as a productive shared network environment. There are several options for putting together your network storage server to ensure low costs, a beneficial return on investment (ROI) as well as reliability and high availability of your vital digital data.

For the large enterprise one must first do a backup strategy cost analysis to compare removable tape backup media versus disk based systems. Key factors here include the risk for human error (the number one cause of data loss) and mitigating these risks by automating the backup process. Other important factors are data compliance issues (HIPAA, SOX, etc) and WAN congestion for off site backup. The ability to archive and the scalability of data must also be considered. If you are archiving hundreds of terabytes as part of your requirements, a boat load of DLT or LTO tapes is hard to beat. Even though disk-based archival costs are dropping rapidly, tape based options still represent probably your best archiving value.

An off site plan such as electronic vaulting online is considered by many to represent the worst solution for long-term archiving, especially if you're paying third-party monthly fees based on the amount of data stored. Online data backup strategies are very limited in archive and scalability due to high-speed connectivity costs and the cost per GB charged by third-party data centers. These costs continue to climb with each passing year.

Every company will face its own unique challenges to backup, store and protect its digital data assets. Make sure you take convenience, reliability, data transfer and backup speeds and the security of your data all into consideration.

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