Re: Digital Bolt

[bof]

> On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:53:05 +0100, I waved a wand and this message

>> magically appears in front of Steve Firth: >> >>> Maybe I'm trying to join Alex? >> >> You could have your very own digital vault, you know. Just buy another >> box with a RAID array, bung Gentoo on it, set up SAMBA/CIFS and get all >> your PCs to backup to it with rsync.. > >Doesn't help much when your house burns down.

Currently thinking about installing a fire safe, seems the data safes are much more expensive than the paper safes, I guess this is because they have to keep a lower internal temperature for backup tapes.

Anyone know about this? I'm only intending to keep hard disc based backup, no tape, so I guess paper safe would be OK; also the digital keypad type fire safes seem a strange idea, as I have thought the electronic keypad and memory would be destroyed by a fire, rendering the safe unopenable. Anyone got experience here?

x-post to uk.d-i-y added

[Bob Mannix]

Fire safes are often recognisable by having external hinge pins. The hinge can then be ground off after a fire to open the safe. Those built solely for security would not have an exposed hinge pin (clearly!). The last time I bought a fire safe the only recognised standards were the German VDMA 60/120 standards which define that the contents must not increase in temperature by more than something like 30degC when the safe is buried in a fire (can't remember temperature) for 60 or 120 minutes. They are also dropped during the test to simulate a building collapse etc.

[djc]

In a serious fire, the safe will either fall through the floor or be buried under the one above. I would not count on a hard disk surviving the shock. Yes, data safes are designed to keep the temperature low, but maybe not low enough. If its data, get some space on a server (or two) offsite and keep copies there.