IoSafe SoloPRO External Hard Drive Aims for Indestructibility

Companies have been experimenting with different ways of making some of their external storage units more durable, but ioSafe decided to just drop all notion of portability or compactness in order to make its newest invention, the USB 3.0 and eSATA-ready SoloPRO, not only waterproof, but also fireproof and theftproof.

Basically, ioSafe made a hard drive with support for the latest connectivity technologies and drove it as high as it could on the physical survivability scale.

Thus, the end-product turned out to be fairly large and, for some, bulky, but it can brag about being impervious to water, dust, fire and even protected from theft.

For those interested in figures, temperatures of up to 1550°F can be withstood for half an hour and the solution can be kept 10 feet underwater for 72 hours and still come out unharmed.

The rugged unit houses a single 3.5-inch HDD inside of it but still provides capacities of 1TB to 2TB.

Two of the other more important assets of the invention, besides its performance specifications, are the anti-theft tab and the built-in Kensington security slot.

As for the performance numbers themselves, ioSafe points at transfer speeds of up to 100 MB/s, which is three to four times faster than USB 2.0.

"The new SoloPRO provides industry-leading performance and physical security as well as plug-and-play simplicity," said ioSafe CEO Robb Moore.

"Additionally, the new interfaces and upgraded Data Recovery Services make the SoloPRO a logical choice for disaster protection in home office and business environments," he added.

Three versions of the disaster-proof HDD will sell, with capacities of 1TB, 1,5TB and 2TB, each priced at $249.99, $319.99 and $419.99, respectively. Shipments will start on September 1.