ioSafe Solo Disaster Proof External Hard Drive Review

Introduction

The Solo from ioSafe is an external hard drive that is designed to keep your data safe in case of a disaster – especially fire and flood. This product comes in four capacities: 500 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB, and 2 TB. We set the 500 GB on fire for 30 minutes and then dropped gallons of water on it. Let’s see if it survived!

When purchased this product includes a three-year warranty and a one-year data recovery service. For USD 100 you can upgrade this to a five-year warranty and a five-year data recovery service.

By the way, ioSafe also has an SSD product line, which is also shock resistant – according to the manufacturer it can be dropped from the top of an eight-story building.

In Figures 1 and 2 you can see the overall look of the Solo, which comes in one color, a dull silver. The general look is a smoothly curved cinder block with the ioSafe logo on the front. The holes on the front above and below the ioSafe logo glow blue when the drive is in use.

Figure 1: ioSafe Solo.

Figure 2: ioSafe Solo.

As you can see in Figure 2 there is only a connection for a USB 2.0 cable – though the SSD models are eSATA-capable. For increased security this model comes with a floor bolt mount on the back of the case.

Figure 3: Cables.

Now let’s see now let’s take a closer look at the inner workings of the Solo.

When you open the case you can plainly see what gives the hard drive its thermal resistance: there are two ceramic pieces fitted together around the hard drive. As you can see there is a fan positioned between the ceramic pieces as well to pull heat off of the hard drive.

Figure 4: Inside the case.

As you can see in Figure 5 one of the ceramic pieces has air pathways molded into it to allow air to be pulled from the front of the case across the hard drive and ejected out the back.

Figure 5: Ceramic parts.

In Figure 6, you can see how the hard drive is fit inside the ceramic shield and the water proof wrap that is around the hard drive. Where the cables enter the water shield you can see some black putty used to water proof this section. The hard drive is held in place with four foam rubber spacers that keep the drive from moving but also allow for some shock absorption.

Figure 6: Between the ceramic shield.

In Figure 7 You can see the main controller used by the Solo, a JMicron JM20337.

Figure 7: Control chip.

As you can see in Figure 8 the hard drive used by this external case is the Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 (HDP725050GLA360).

Figure 8: Hard drive.