Anyone have experience with ioSafe Rugged external hard drives?

[lostworldexpedition]

We need a new external hard drive(s) to replace our ailing and full drives. We are considering the ioSafe rugged external with the following claims:

Crush protection up to 5,000 lbs.
Drop protection up to 20'
Immersion protection up to 30' for 3 days
USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, FireWire 800
Data Recovery Service up to $5,000
World's best warranty
Works with Macs and PCs

I like the claims, but in an age of pretty inexpensive memory prices these are expensive. MSRP FOR 500 gig is $212.50 although I looked at Amazon and found the same 500 for $150.95 not so bad, but still pricey. I guess you can't put a price on data safety , but I really do not know this brand...

We have been using simple external hard drives for 2 years with no problems. We store them in a small Pelican case with Pelican "rechargeable" desiccant cans, but I must admit I am usually slightly concerned about loosing data and photos.

Any thoughts?

 

[HumphreyBear]

I always try to travel with two cheap external hard drives when I have photos etc I want to keep, especailly now they are so small (external 3.5" cases with power supplies were harder to hide away!). I use one as the primary backup and archive repository to keep the laptop drive relatively free, and then run a small script which mirrors the primary drive data to the secondary one to make an exact duplicate of the primary drive. I then put the secondary away nice and safe. I don't know the scripts for Mac otherwise I'd be happy to share it with you (mine's a Windows shell script and utility - probably easy to replicate). On a long trip I will periodically buy a new cheap drive to be the new secondary and ship the previous one back home for safe keeping via a courier service, not too expensive and provides considerable reassurance they won't all float down the Amazon one day. I (personally) wouldn't use local post services as I'd be too worried about it never making it out of the country...
.
Regarding the expensive impact resistant ones it depends on how you plan to use them - an external hard drive which is not used whilst the vehicle is moving is *far* less likely to suffer a failure than one used whilst in motion. Not a univeral rule, of course, but they are far more likely to suffer damage from shock or vibration whilst the heads are in motion (reading or writing data and hitting a big bump etc.). The pelican case should keep a static drive (or drives) from suffering too much and is a good idea.

 

[ThomD]

I don't know anything about these drives, but Woot (sellout) has the 2T model for $200. http://sellout.woot.com/sale/21315 There is probably some good info in the discussion about it.

 

[landcruising]

too big in size in my opinion!
Adventurous greetings,
Coen

 

[Brett at ioSafe]

Hi Luis/Lacey,

Thanks for asking about ioSafe. Thought I'd plug in a couple of links that you may find interesting (and hope that doing so doesn't offend any of the members here!):

http://ngadventure.typepad.com/blog...ernal-hard-drive-ideal-for-photographers.html

http://alexekins.co.uk/iosafe-rugged-portable-hard-drive/

http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2011/...irkby-tech-for-the-modern-day-adventurer.html

Let me know if you have any questions.

Brett

 

[lostworldexpedition]

Thank you Brett... I appreciate your input. Still looking around, but the iosafe is an attractive package.