ioSafe might not be the largest or best-known makers of ruggedized storage devices on the planet, but the company has made an impression at this year’s CES short by abusing its Rugged Portable hard drive in creative ways—including submerging the device in water and blasting it with a shotgun…then proving the data is intact. For folks who live a dangerous lifestyle—or perhaps just have rambunctious children or siblings—the drive provides reasonable assurance that precious data will be intact and recoverable—and ioSafe backs that up with up to $5,000 of third-party data recovery service.
Iosafe says the Rugged Portable drive can handle immersion in either fresh or sale water for up to three days at depths of up to 30 feet and also stand up to immersion in oils, fuels, and other solvents. The drives can withstand drops of up to 20 feet and the titanium version can handle being crushed by up to 5,000 pounds of pressure. (An aluminum version can handle up to 2,500 pounds.) The drives can also handle continuous exposure to sand, salt, fog, rain, ice, and UV radiation for up to 24 hours, meeting MIL-STD-810G specification.
The drives are available in both traditional hard drive form with capacities from 250 GB to 1 TB and SSD versions with capacities of 256 to 512 GB. The drives work with PCs and Macs and feature USB 2.0 and 3.0 connectors, along with a FireWire 800 connector. The drives are bus-powered—no separate AC adapter necessary—and ship with a USB Micro-B Y-Cable for for use with low-powered USB 2.0 ports.
Pricing? Well, the 256 GB SSD version starts at $1,299.99 with an aluminum case and $1,999.99 for the titanium case: bump that up to $2,799.99 and $3,499.99 for the 512 GB version. But hard drive versions are much more affordable, with a 150 GB 5,000rpm hard drive going for $149.99 all the way through a 1 TB 5000rpm version for $399.99.
And if you just want to buy one of the drives to have a blast, check out ioSafe’s demonstration video:
