[chasg]

Hi All, wasn't sure where to post this, so I came here.

I'm looking for a fire-proof safe to store hard drives.

I am a professional photographer, and my work takes up a lot of space :-) For a while I had a system whereby old work was archived to DVD. It got to the point where it made more sense to archive to hard drives, because of the amount of work it took to burn discs from large jobs. ("archive" meaning long-term storage of work that may or may not need to be accessed again in the medium-long term. Backup is a different issue).

I have a 5-bay hard drive enclosure, and as jobs have been completed, I've moved the data from my working drive (high speed, in my computer) to two redundant hard drives in the enclosure. When those drives are full, I pull them out, shelve them and put in two new ones. I mention this because I want to point out that I'm not using hard drives with their own cases, these are bare drives.

I'd like to more securely store these drives. One drive is held offsite, but one needs to stay in my office to afford quick access if a client wants something from an old project. I think that a fire-proof safe would be a good idea.

Can anyone recommend a safe large enough to hold, say, 10 drives? Whatever brand people kindly recommend, it'd have to be available in London (UK).

Thanks in advance for any recommendations,

Chas

[dschwebs]

You do not want a standard fireproof safe to store data or media in. (media meaning Hard Drives, DVD's, CD's, tape backups, photographs etc.) The problem with a standard fire safe is that most of them are engineered to pump steam inside the safe to keep the tempature below 350 degrees F which is when paper will start to char or burn. Steam or moisture will damage any data/media. They make safes called "Data/Media Safes" specifically for this purpose. Computer media is so easily damaged, manufacturers recommend computer media not be exposted to temperatures over 125 degrees F or humidity over 85%. There are many different sizes but most are rated to protect data/media for over 1 hour. This website sells data/media safes but does not ship to the UK. You might be able to get the same brands in the UK or at least find something similar in size. Sentry also makes waterproof/fireproof hard drives which may also work instead of buying a safe to store them in.

[subego]

This might be a lame question, but why would you need fire protection for something that's also stored offsite?

Either way though, dschwebs has the right idea. You need a data safe as opposed to a fire safe.

Edit: never mind my question, makes sense as I think about it.