The ioSafe SoloPRO unit was connected to the USB 3.0 port of an ASRock Vision 3D 252B machine. Based on the Cougar Point HM65 Intel Chipset, the PC's NEC based USB 3.0 ports are able to deliver the full USB 3.0 bandwidth. We benchmarked the SoloPRO with both IOMeter and HD Tune Pro. The results are presented below. Note that the performance metrics are a very minor aspect of what the ioSafe units are all about.

IOMeter

IOMeter Performance
Test Transfer Rate (MBps)
4 KB Random Write 0.64
4 KB Random Read 0.27
128 KB Sequential Read 119.0
128 KB Sequential Write 107.8

HD Tune Pro

With HD Tune Pro, reads and writes to the disks benchmarked at an average of around 99 MBps. The gallery below presents HD Tune Pro screenshots for read and write benchmarks as well as random access benchmarks.

Power Consumption

At idle, the unit consumed 7.5 W (which is probably higher than the standard external hard drives due to the presence of a fan). During periods of heavy disk activity, the consumption was 9.2 W.

The Disaster Proof ioSafe SoloPRO Final Words
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  • ant6n - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link

    Most of the inventions related to cooling the drive while fire/water-proofing will be moot once SSDs get cheaper. Maybe they should focus on finding ways to redundantly store data in SSDs in a fire/water proofed way.
  • ganeshts - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link

    ioSafe has a disaster proof SSD solution also. Why do you think fire/water proofing is not necessary for SSDs?
  • bji - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link

    I think you misunderstood the comment.

    The comment was that COOLING THE DRIVE is not necessary for an SSD which makes it easier to develop fire/water proof solutions based on SSDs.

    The comment was NOT that fire/water proofing is not necessary for SSDs.
  • B-Unit1701 - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link

    I would imagine that is the basis for the internal drive plugged at the end of the article. A standard sized SSD in a 5/12" vault.
  • PostToaster - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link


    bji -

    Mmh didn't misunderstand your comment. You mis-wrote it. You should have said "trivial" instead of "moot". They mean different things.
  • robb.moore - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link

    Hi bjl-
    Cooling electronics is always important as HDDs, like SSDs, all generate heat. SSDs generally do generate less heat than HDDs at idle but when operating - they both use about 4-5W of energy. Even 1W in a small enough enclosure can get incredibly hot if insulated.

    ioSafe technology is about how to built a heat generating computer in a perfectly insulated box. It's tricky to do both at a price point that everyone can afford. Thanks for your comments!
    -Robb

    Robb Moore
    CEO
    ioSafe
  • Samus - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link

    I agree. 5-watt SSD's get pretty hot, you can't just put them in an air-tight enclosure. I've read a number of stories involving OCZ's drives (among the highest wattage drives) failing in laptops, especially older Thinkpad's that were designed for 4200RPM drives.
  • g00ey - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link

    I'm still concerned about the integrity of data storage. It is a well known fact that storage devices are prone to failure no matter how fire- and waterproof you make them. This means that some form of redundancy is required and at the moment only ZFS can deliver proper protection against data corruption.

    File systems such as BrtFS and HammerFS look promising but it will take years until they can deliver the same data integrity protection as ZFS currently does.
  • robb.moore - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link

    Agreed - redundant copies of the data is VERY important. (See 3-2-1 Backup in the comments further down.)

    The simple choice with ioSafe is that if you're going to buy an external hard drive anyway...would you like the RED hard drive or the FIREPROOF WATERPROOF hard drive for your data.

    -Robb

    Robb Moore
    CEO
    ioSafe
  • JNo - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link

    Off site cloud storage (as well as onsite secondary backup system) is surely the way to go? Onsite backup can burn down too but one or more cloud systems are unlikely to go down simultaneously. Now if only it was cheap enough to back up my movie collection as well as my documents :)

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