With the internal performance numbers out of the way, we can get to the real test. ioSafe asked us if we wanted to test the Fire and Water proof claim...

We're not called Mad Shrimps for nothing!

Testing water proof is easy to do, fire proof however.. not so straight forward. They specified that their device can survive 30 minutes when temperature reach up to ~840°C. Those numbers are quite specific.

The specs of the ioSafe box are build on feedback they got from the US Department of Commerce's full scale house fire experiment (.pdf), US Department put a series of sensors inside a 2 story house and than put started a fire and measured the temperatures reached over time.

This chart is of the hottest room in the house, sensors at different heights, as you can see, higher in the room gets highest temperatures, on a table (75cm) the maximum temperature is 550-580°C. If you place the ioSafe on the ground you can see that the 15cm result maxes out at 180°C over a period of 6 minutes.

So temperature wise if your house caught fire, having the ioSafe close to the ground will ensure longest longevity, how long? The 30 minutes claim is for the maximum of 840°C, so at lower temperatures the device will last longer as the insulation inside does it job!

30 minutes should give the fire department enough time to arrive at your house and start pouring water over the flames, according to this 2006 study of the Fire Administration's Structure Fire Response Times (.pdf) in the US.

It takes at the most 20 minutes for the fire truck to reach a house and starting fire fighting. In most cases it's even less than 10 minutes! It's at that point that the water proof feature of the ioSafe becomes very important as your NAS will get thousands of liters of water over it, and if it's low to the floor, even be submersed... for multiple days.

With one tool you open the ioSafe in two steps, first door is for fire protection, second one keeps water out. The drive bays can host 3.5" as well as 2.5" disks. The power supply is a power brick outside of the enclosure, so there's no explosion risk inside the ioSafe that can destroy your data. ioSafe gives you a small magnet to keep the tool attached to the enclosure, easy solution!

Test Setup

Our fire torture test was done on a BBQ powered by coconut charcoal which should burn at higher and more stable temperatures. Add a powerful 2200W hair dryer and you get some high burning temperatures.

We left the ioSafe in the BBQ 30 minutes before dousing the flames with several large buckets of water.

The motherboard and fan burned out quite quickly, causing lots of smoke, than it was just a metal boxing sitting in the fire.

The insulation inside did a good job keeping the heat out, the outside of the ioSafe case does shown signs of sufferance.

We waited 24 hours and then opened the front door, to find the hard disk inside in pristine condition.

On the site of Synology there's an useful guide:
"In the unfortunate event your DiskStation fails, you'll probably want to recover the data stored on its hard drives. Data stored on the DiskStation's hard drives can be easily recovered using an Ubuntu live CD and your computer."

We followed the steps and were able to access all the information on the recovered HDD, a success!