Safe Data Storage & Planning

Data backup is a primary concern for small businesses across the country. Creating and maintaining a solid plan for backup of records, databases, Quickbooks and more is an often overlooked step that can lead to catastrophe.

In this blog we link to an Indiana Contractor that has taken the time to educate their clients on both the importance of backing up data and documents and how easy it is to implement a safe plan.

Read more about Artisan Electric

24 hr. Sale on ioSafe 1.5 TB Hard Drives @ Woot

For the next 24 hours you can purchase an ioSafe fireproof hard drive with a $100 instant rebate from Sellout.Woot!

Sellout.Woot is a partnership website with Yahoo! Shopping that showcases great products for a limited amount of time. During the 24 hr. sale, you are allow to "woot" or buy the ioSafe hard drive at the lowest price available online.

The catch is that you only get one chance to purchase, so make sure you buy the amount you need the first time!

MSRP: $299.99 plus shipping

Sellout.Woot Price: $249.99 plus $5 shipping

ioSafe Hard Drives Available in Australia

ioSafe, Inc. the manufacturer of hard drives that are fireproof and waterproof now has full service distribution and product availability in Australia. ioSafe Australia stocks and installs the USB external hard drives and the ioSafe R4 Network Storage Servers with full support for disaster recovery and data recovery services.

We recently had a chance to speak with Jon Ellis of ioSafe AU about the ioSafe hard drives and market in Australia. In the past year, Australia has had the misfortune of many wildfires or bush fires that have taken the lives of approx. 170 people in the state of Victoria. Some rural towns have also been completely destroyed leaving homes and businesses in a state of recovery and rebuilding.

From the business side of disaster recovery, Jon Ellis of ioSafe AU states, "Until now, users have been looking for and companies have been developing solutions for the one remaining flaw in disk drive technology. That flaw is that disk drives do not do well in natural disasters where floods and fires can destroy their precious information. But that flaw has now been removed by ioSafe, a leading supplier of processes and technologies that make electronics disaster proof.

ioSafe AU distributes the complete range of ioSafe products in Australia and New Zealand. iosafe AU is a privately held company with headquaters in Perth, WA and focuses on product leadership and continuous customer support."

If you have any comments or concerns about our products, services or support, please call +61 86102 2919 or send an email to sales@iosafe.com.au. We welcome your feedback.

FREE ioSafe Hard Drive

That is correct! Win on the best hard drives in the world from ioSafe by simply becoming a fan of the ioSafe on Facebook!

You can get a free 1TB external hard drive by becoming one of the first 5000 fans to join their group.

You can sign up as a friend for the giveaway at: http://www.facebook.com/iosafe

ioSafe CEO Gives Back to Community Suffering from Fire Disaster

Recently the CEO of ioSafe, manufacturer of hard drives that are fireproof and waterproof announced that he is giving away free ioSafe solo hard drives to the victims of the Highway 49 wildfire.

This California wildfire took place in Auburn, CA the headquarters of ioSafe, Inc. where the CEO Robb Moore and his family live. Fire insurance can help victims rebuild homes, but often times the photographs and videos are gone forever. Read more about this story in the Auburn Journal

Photo by Michael Kirby

MacWorld ioSafe Solo Review

Today MacWorld gave the ioSafe Solo hard drive the THUMBS UP after putting the Solo through some 3,000 Degree fire balls at The Crucible and even tossing the hard drive into a downtown San Francisco fountain.

You can read watch the video and read the the full ioSafe review at:

http://www.macworld.com/article/142801/2009/09/iosafe_solo.html

For more information on these rugged hard drives visit www.iosafe.com

ReadyNAS Duo and ioSafe Solo Workaround

For those of you using the ReadyNAS Duo as your backup server there have been some issues with the ReadyNAS recognizing the ioSafe Solo.

A clever workaround is as follows:

Reboot the DUO with the ioSafe hard drive plugged into the back USB port. Disable the DUO's power timer (this timer shuts down the device at night and powers back on in the AM) and the Solo will work as a backup drive to of your Netgear home media server or business server.

1 TB Hard Drive Sale, $30 Savings on ioSafe Solo

HDDFireSafe.com is offering a limited time special on the 1 TB Hard Drive from ioSafe. Save $30 right now, normal selling price is $229.99, the price is now $199.00!!

Buy the ioSafe Hard Drive NOW at http://www.hddfiresafe.com

Special Pricing for Friends and Family - $100 Savings!

Looking for the best price on an external hard drive? Look no further than the ioSafe friends and family discount with a savings of $100.00!! Get a FREE upgrade to the 5 year warranty with this secret link!

http://www.iosafe.com/solo-special-offer-friends-family-free-5yr-upgrade

The ioSafe Solo has the following features:


* External Hard Drive
* USB Plug and Play
* Rugged
* Fireproof
* Waterproof
* FREE $100 5 YR DATA RECOVERY SERVICE FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS!

http://www.iosafe.com/solo-special-offer-friends-family-free-5yr-upgrade

Customer Review of ioSafe Solo - Home Fire Test

Recently, the Home Server Show performed a complete review of the ioSafe Solo hard drive by setting it on fire in their own back yard - proving once again that the ioSafe hard drives can withstand fire and flood, protecting your family photos, video and business data from disaster. For the same price as a regular brand you can get fire and water protection for your priceless digital data.

Read the Hard Drive Review here:

http://homeservershow.com/iosafe-solo-fireproofwaterproof-external-drive-put-to-the-test.html

Watch the ioSafe Video Review here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6l4kxhl_DI


About the Home Server Show:[excerpt from homeservershow.com]

This podcast and blog is aiming for the Home Server enthusiast market whether that is Windows Home Server, Media Vaults, NAS, and home storage in general. It will also cover the convergence of Home Storage with networking, and Home Media, including Media Center.

About Dave:

I have over 18 years experience in the networking and Internet field. Some of his past experiences include 12 years as a technician for small and large networking environments including R&D and implementation of early technologies such as wireless networking and internet telephony. I also served over 6 years as VP Operations for a large regional Internet Service Provider. I spent the last several years running a small business that provides Small Business Networking and Home Networking Convergence of the computer and the media room. Most recently, I attained this Microsoft Certified Professional certification in Designing, Deploying and Managing a Network Solution for the Small and Medium-sized Business.

I am a true Geek and gadget freak. I love my Zune, Media Center, and HP’s EX475 so I guess you can say I am “onboard” with Microsoft. I was on the Windows Home Server Beta prior to release and ran a home brew box and recently purchased the EX475. I have installed several EX475’s for customers.

I hope you enjoy this site and the podcast and feel free to leave comments.

13 Toughest Gadgets of 2009

When it comes to technology, many of us have found ourselves with a cracked screen on our cell phone, chipped corners or broken keyboards. Many times we need tough, we need rugged and most of all we need reliability.

The Hottest Gadgets has put together 13 of the best hard drives and more for 2009 and you can read the full story here.

http://thehottestgadgets.com/2009/05/the-toughest-secure-gadgets-002407

Mac Users and Elegant External Hard Drives

Every distinguished Mac user needs an elegant external hard drive to match the aesthetic and functionality of their computing needs... Most graphic designers, artists and video/music producers do a great job of ensuring their data is backed up to the best of their ability and this loyal Apple computer connoisseur sets the record straight on using the ioSafe Solo as an external hard drive for mac.


Read the complete hard drive review here: http://tonedefsystems.com/forum/weblog_entry.php?e=137

PogoPlug + ioSafe = Cloud Computing without the Drizzle

Let's face it, cloud computing has it's advantages (off site, remote accessibility, etc) but even Google can mess it up sometimes...thus proving that a combination of on site and off site are best. As technology changes, prices drop for the consumer and in today's computer world you can buy a fireproof hard drive for the same price as a regular hard drive - it makes cents$$, there is a lot of value there. The only downside is that you are relying on a mechanical drive (susceptible to failure).

Along comes the Pogoplug!!
The Pogoplug connects your external hard drive to the Internet, easily allowing you to share and access your files wherever you may be. This includes smart phones! Simply connect the Pogoplug to network and attach an external drive. Simple. Done.

By combining the Pogoplug and ioSafe external hard drives you can get on site data protection from fire and flood and the benefits of mobile file access and sharing.

Two great products (both got big thumbs up at CES this year) combined can help solve your data backup strategy in a very cost effective manner.

500GB Hard Drives

Comparing Apples to Oranges
A quick search of some of the popular e-tail outlets brings back a wide range of external hard drives in a wide variety of flavors and features. From aluminum clad with flashing lights to bamboo wrapped versions, it can be a challenge when you compare all of the options. So let's take a look at a regular 500GB hard drive

Interface Options

USB 2.0 (USB 3.0 soon?!??!?)
FireWire
Ethernet

Value Added Features

Push Button Backup
Free Backup Software
Fireproof
Waterproof
Data Recovery Service

Cache Buffer Size

8MB, 16MB or 32 MB

Hard Drive Speeds

5400 RPM, 7200 RPM or 10,000RPM


Looking for the extraordinary disk drive? This is not your typical 500GB hard drive, it's fireproof up to 1550 degrees F and waterproof for 3 days at 10 feet of saltwater.

Solo Drive and Reformatting

The ioSafe Solo hard drive comes out of the box with NTFS formatting. For the Mac world, users might want to reformat. If the external hard drive is formatted FAT32, both Macs and PCs can read the drive, however there is a limitation to the max file size - limited to 3 GBs

Google Confirms Cloud Backup Not Secure

Google, Inc. has reported that a software bug has publicly shared online documents for many of the users of Google Docs application service.

This security risk highlights the importance of storing documents on site in secure environment. Moving documents over an internet connection always opens your data up to a security risk.

The age old question of offsite vs. onsite data storage continually comes to the forefront.


Read More... here

A great alternative to offsite data backup and storage is to use a secure rugged hard drive from ioSafe. The Solo external usb device is both fireproof and waterproof and can be bolted down for added security. If you backup your primary hard drive to an external disk you protect your data from loss.

Apple Airport Extreme and ioSafe Solo

Several users have reported mixed results with combining the Apple Airport Extreme with the ioSafe Solo hard drive.

According to the ioSafe website, "Currently compatibility is the Apple Airport Extreme is not supported. Several users have reported mixed results with combining the Apple Airport Extreme with the ioSafe Solo. We are working on resolving the issue but cannot guarantee compatibility at this time. Try updating the Airport Extreme firmware to 7.4.1 as this has worked with some users to enable compatibility."

Hot Deals on ioSafe Solo End March 6th, 2009

The best value in external hard drives (approx. $0.22 per GB) comes to an end this Friday, March 6th 2009. Introductory pricing on the ioSafe Solo, a fireproof and waterproof hard drive, has been in effect since January 6th.

For little more than the cost of regular external hard drives you can get fire and flood protection for your data...it's a no brainer for any business or home user that has precious digital photos and video.

Inside every ioSafe Solo is a 7200 RPM Seagate hard drive (offering the best in reliability). To see a live review, go to YouTube and search for ioSafe Solo.

The 1.5 TB Solo includes a FREE UPGRADE to the 5-year warranty with a $1,000 disaster recovery service - but this offer ends tomorrow!

ioSafe Solo and a Windows Home Media Server

The ioSafe Solo external USB hard drives offer great value per gigabyte when compared to regular brands of disk drives. Fire and flood protection are a vital element to any backup, storage and recovery plan, now for little more than the cost of a regular external backup device you can get priceless fire and flood insurance for your digital family photo albums and business data

The following is an excerpt from Home Server Hacks and Microsoft MVP Donavon West

Creating a WHS disaster recovery plan

How can you effectively use the ioSafe Solo as part of your Windows Home Server disaster recovery plan? As far as I see it there are two approaches that you can take:
Plan A

With this approach, you build a system comprised of a standard SATA system drive and use two or more ioSafe USB drives for data storage. With data duplication turned on, you will have all of your files (minus re-creatable system files) stored on disaster proof drives. If you ever experienced a fire, the WHS would be destroyed (you can rebuild that), but all of your data will be secure.

Once the ioSafe drives are back (you need to send the charred remains back to ioSafe to be recovered), simply plug them in, rebuild the system drive using the system recovery DVD and you are back in business my man!

Plan A is more costly (requiring multiply ioSafe drives) but provides complete protection for all of your data. Note that because you entire system (minus the system drive) is running on USB connected drives, the data throughput speed will not be as snappy as on internal SATA systems.
Plan B

The other less costly approach is to build up a standard system utilizing standard drives, like the one you probably have right now. Power Pack 1 introduced a feature that will let you backup certain high value shares to an external hard drive. Plan B would make that external hard drive a fireproof/waterproof ioSafe Solo drive.

READ MORE...

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Click here for the full story of ioSafe hard drives vs. Online Backup

File Serving with the ioSafe Solo - USB to FTP

Excerpt taken from
Serving your External Hard Drive

I just wanted to add a short tutorial for those of you who think that having your files accessible no matter where you are is an interesting alternative to carrying around that scratched and battered jump drive. Actually, mine has crapped out more than a few times and can have problems being mounted on older computers and PCs. Yeah, I'm a Mac guy...

So, my ioSafe Solo rugged hard drive is what I use as backup for all of my important home files, designs, posters, photos, music, etc. All the stuff that pays the bills. So, it must remain on and connected to my LAN (local area network) anyway. I figured I'd just open the LAN up to the world and serve my stuff wherever I need to work; meaning essentially I can transfer files from my backup drive to whatever office(s) or domicile(s) I will be located during the course of a day and vice versa. Intriguing, eh?

Read more...

Self Service Pricing

New pricing is now in effect for all ioSafe hard drives and systems and the good news is that pricing has been lowered on all enterprise class systems. Included with every purchase of an ioSafe R4 or ioSafe S2 is a FREE Solo USB external hard drive (500 GB) valued at $199.99.

You can get a Self-Service Price Quote for ioSafe disaster proof hardware equipment without having to contact a sales person or fill out a long form complements of HDDFireSafe.com. HDDFireSafe, A Division of K.L. Security Enterprises, Inc uses a service called EchoQuote that provides the back-end quoting engine. Check it out. You will get your quote in seconds with no annoying phone calls.

ioSafe Solo Reviews

More and more business owners, professional photographers and music producers are finding the ioSafe Solo external hard drive to be a top performer for data backup and storage.

This ioSafe review was posted today by an independent graphic designer and music producer.

NETGEAR's RangeMax Wireless Router and ioSafe Solo Hard Drive

Adding USB external storage to your existing network is simple offers many benefits to all users of the network.

The NETGEAR RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router delivers great wireless performance for home and small business networking operations. With separate Wireless-N access points for media/gaming and data (photos, video, etc), and concurrent Dual Band N, you get reliable connections for HD media streaming, gaming, and the best Internet bandwidth. Featuring four gigabit Ethernet ports enabling maximum wired speeds, this high performance router is an ideal solution for the connected home with multiple computers and network enabled gadgets running multiple applications at the same time.

The ioSafe Solo fireproof waterproof USB external hard drive can be combined with the NETGEAR's RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router (WNDR3700) to create a safe place on any home network for all users to store data.

Apple Time Machine Backup to ioSafe Solo

Every Mac user can thank Apple for developing the Time Machine backup software. Generally speaking, setting up backup software can be quite complex when it comes to the PC world. However, Time Machine has made data backup and recovery simple and elegant.

There are several hard drive manufacturers that bundle their external drives (USB and Firewire connectivity) with Windows-based backup software and/or have built in "one-touch" or "push button backup" solutions. This type of backup process still requires some experience and knowledge for setup so that a scheduled backup process work as required (incremental, full, or file-change backup). On the other hand, Apple Time Machine, makes set-up and configuration smooth as silk. The process is nearly automatic (even my mom can set it up). When a new hard drive is connected, Apple Time Machine brings up a prompt asking whether or not the drive will be used for data backups. Keep in mind that if your external hard drive is formatted for Windows (FAT32 or NTFS), you will have to reformat the disk before Time Machine will be able to use it for backup.

Time Machine will keeps daily backups for the last month, and maintains as many weekly backups as will fit on the chosen backup drive. All that said, the ioSafe Solo works flawlessly with Apple Time Machine backup software. You'll be able to setup automated backups into a fireproof and waterproof rugged hard drive for little more than the cost of any regular hard drive.

How to Make a USB External Hard Drive into NAS

Have you ever wondered how you can use your external hard drive as Network Attached Storage (NAS)? The process really isn't that complex and with a few pieces and parts you can easily backup to a 'brand new' NAS device (or pseudo-NAS device:)

One of the easiest ways of connecting USB hard drives, external drives or a thumb drive to the network is with Belkin's N+ Wireless ADSL2+ Modem-Router. With this simple plug and play device you can store and share media content, photos, digital music and video files from the USB hard drive to every computer on the network. The N+ router is based on the draft 802.11n 2.0 technology which provides the wireless range to easily cover a large home or office

Another easy way to make your USB hard drive into a NAS is with the LinkSys Dual-N Band Wireless Router. This award winning USB to NAS router has been touted by PC Advisor as a Best Buy and by Laptop Magazine as Editors Choice. This Cisco/LinkSys router is made for for speed and optimized for media. Music, movies, gaming: whatever you’re into, Dual-N Band Wireless Router delivers double the bandwidth and media-optimized performance so you can enjoy it more smoothly, with less lag, all around your home. Easy to use and setup, this router also includes a Mac computer setup wizard.

When you take a look at a USB desktop drive versus the NAS storage there are pros and cons to each type of storage. However with the addition of network wireless router you can easily make the conversion and not hurt your wallet too much.

ioSafe Unveils the ioSafe Solo - World's First 1.5TB External Hard Drive That Protects Against Data Loss From the Risks of Fires and Floods

Hard Drive Comparison

Compared to Western Digital My Book and Seagate, Lacie or Buffalo External Hard Drives, the ioSafe Solo Sets a New Benchmark in Improving Data Protection.

Starting at $149, the Affordable ioSafe Solo Improves Risks for Disk Backup Disaster Recovery Solutions.

AUBURN, Calif., Jan. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- ioSafe Inc., the technology solution vendor in disaster-proof hardware technologies and devices, introduced the ioSafe Solo, the world's first 1.5TB external hard drive with integrated ioSafe disaster protection technologies. Optimized to be a low cost external hard drive backup solution and improve the risks associated with data loss, the ioSafe Solo was introduced last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The fireproof and waterproof device capabilities were tested and compared versus unprotected hard drives and gathered extensive glowing reviews from attendees. During the demonstration, the pros and cons of disaster proof external hard drives versus non-disaster protected hard drives such as the Seagate FreeAgent or Western Digital My Book were compared.

________________________________________

Finally an affordable hard drive with fireproof and waterproof protection will be available to the average consumer. Let's look at the pros and cons here...

PROS

When I run out of storage I am going to go to Best Buy or Fry's to buy a new hard drive. When I take a look at the choices available to me I can go for the red anodized drive, the desktop drive with blinking lights or choose the fireproof/flood proof hard drive. Common sense tells me that for the few extra dollars, the ioSafe Solo USB drive is worth the money. After all, it does have a 7200 RPM Seagate or WD drive inside so I know it is going to be reliable from the manufacturer.

CONS

It's not a portable, but ioSafe isn't selling me a portable drive, they are selling me insurance and peace of mind in a desktop storage device. Maybe they will start building a portable rugged version in the future?!?!?

When I step back and take a close look at hard drive storage another factor enters the equation and that is fire insurance. Each and every month I kindly pay my premium to State Farm to ensure that I get back my furniture and personal belongings. However, my insurance policy will never be able to recover my data from a fire. The question to ask now is how much would you pay to get back your digital family photo album. It's priceless, the cost of the Solo is $149.

Compare ioSafe Solo to other Hard Drive Brands

ioSafe has just released their new desktop storage device, the ioSafe Solo - it's a USB 2.0 disk drive that is both fireproof and waterproof. With 500Gb starting at $149.99 it's time to take a comparison of other hard drive manufacturers and see which one offers the best value for the buck.

Storage Capacity
Yesterday I stopped by Fry's electronics and went straight to the hard drives section to see what the big box store was pushing at 500GB and the price range. A standard hard drive (5400 rpm) cost between $119 and $179...the only bells and whistles I could find were pretty lights, cool packaging materials and the occassional 'push button' backup feature (definitely a plus).

The ioSafe Solo at the 500GB range is a 7200 rpm drive and gives me fire and flood protection. Will the fire happen? It's possible. Flood? much more likely in our neck of the woods. Will my primary computer drive crash? Eventually, yes, so I better be backing up my data, digital photos , videos and music.

What about RAID?
Well, the Solo doesn't offer you RAID to protect you from disk failure, but ioSafe already solved that with their internal hard drive called the Pilot and Squadron series...these are 3.5" internal hard drives that you can put inside ANY storage array or server to get your RAID. The price is comparable and if you're the DIY type, then build your next RAID Array with fireproof/waterproof disk drives...why wouldn't you?

What's the Point of all this?
Simply put, it's this...if I am in need of an external hard drive and I go out looking for one, it's a no brainer to spend the extra $10 bucks for fireproof and waterproof (plus the added $1,000 no questions asked one-time data recovery service). No brainer.