Blue 2.0 - 2.9 MP 15X Optical Zoom Waterproof 24mm Wide Angle Point & Shoot

Pros: Waterproof (up to 10 ft in salt or fresh water for up to 3 days) Fireproof (up to 1500F for up to 30 minutes) Large capacity Data recovery plan included

Cons: Heavy, USB 2.0, large footprint

Overall Review: I have a house computer with video surveillance and needed a large central backup for everything; this unit fits the bill. Going through the options on Newegg was easy enough and I quickly found this well-reviewed fire and waterproof option. Having purchased Iomega products in the past, I was familiar with the brand. The unit is heavy; 20lbs. Seemed to be more like a battery backup than external hard drive. It was not shipped in any extra box, just label slapped on the box. The unit was covered in a white powder; a little card inside confirmed this was fire-safing material. Hookup was a breeze and it functioned no different than other external hard drives. The footprint and weight leave something to be desired but completely understandable for what this thing does. Toggle on/off switch seems adequate and plug end is small to help not take up UPS space. USB 2.0 is not terribly fast but ok. I would have liked to see some other interface options but overall a great product for price.

Pros: Piece of mind of water and fire resistance Fast and steady performance Runs very cool Excellent customer service

Cons: None so far

Overall Review: This is the second ioSafe purchased for our business. These big waterproof and fire resistant drives provide excellent destinations for our server backups and ideally fit into our HIPPA compliance disaster recovery strategy. After running the first one (a 1.5 TB unit) for several months with no issues we bought this 2 TB unit for backups of a second server. I was pleasantly surprised to receive an email from the ioSafe CEO following up to make sure I was satisfied with my purchases which shows their commitment to their customers. It’s a great product and I plan to purchase another soon for my home.

Pros: Rock solid, Highest onsite security for a drive possible, works with Mac OSX Time Machine (both locally over USB 2.0 & over my network through my Netgear router WNDR3800), personalized customer service, inexpensive ( a bargain at 10 times the price if you ever had a fire or flood in your home or business). Newer versions have USB 3.0.

Cons: None really. Ok it has a fan, but I knew that going in, and was deploying it in a closet with my router, modem etc so that was not a problem for me. The fan is not screaming or anything and would be inaudible beside my PC.

Overall Review: I received an email from the CEO of the company a week or so after recieving the drive. It was a real email asking a few questions about my purchase, not one of those generic survey requests. I went back a forth with Robb a few times with questions and answers. Seems like a great fellow with a keen understanding of his company's market. I had trouble initially getting it to be seen by Time Machine over my network (not a drive issue but rather a OSX and router issue). To resolve I needed a single string 'sudo defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1' in terminal and my router WNDR3800 needed to have the drive plugged in and then rebooted from within the web interface. After that everything has worked without missing a beat. TM automatically mounts the drive when ever it needs to do a b/u.

Pros: Customer Service is outstanding. I received the ioSafe from Newegg and everything seemed to be better that I expected, size, weight and how it preformed. Tried backing up from my home server, computer etc., everything worked fine with one exception, Vista complete PC backup, would not backup, I contacted ioSafe customer service, and they explained why, sent me a prepaid UPS shipping lable, so I could return it to have the control board changed. I received the ioSafe about 11:00 AM and had all this arranged the same day by 6:00 PM, NO phone calls, just a few emails, with speedy answers!

Cons: None

Overall Review: Backups and backup security is my highest proioity

Pros: The large size makes it nearly impossible to knock these drives over or otherwise damage them. I have two ioSafes sitting under my desk at my feet and never have to worry about knocking them around. I should note that these drives are THAT large but are indeed considerably larger than other 3.5" drives. For me, this is a huge plus. The fireproof/waterproof protection is wonderful and I hope I never have to update my review detailing my post-disaster experience with the drives. The CEO emailed me personally which has never happened to me with any purchase I've made in the past. This is very reassuring.

Cons: I can't think of a single con to mention. The large size may be a negative for some people. You definitely won't be lugging this around in your laptop bag. For those purposes, the ioSafe portable would be a much wiser option. I don't really hear much noise at all coming from the units so no complains there. What really stinks is that these are still standard 3.5" HDDs so they will eventually die. However, for th price I could not have expected ioSafe to offer an SSD. Assuming all goes well, I will be buying two more ioSafes in about three years so maybe by then SSD will be a more affordable storage option. I would also love to have some protection from magnetism in the event of some sort of electromagnetic blast, but again, for this price, what could I expect? I paid around $200 for each unit. This is only slightly more expensive than if I bought a 3.5" drive with a mid-level enclosure.

Pros: Very simple to use. My wife had no issues with it. Windows XP, and Windows 7 both recognize the drive and automatically installed the drive as if it was a local hard drive.

Cons: It's big and heavy, but so are safes.

Overall Review: This thing is designed to take a beating. Don't be surprised that it's big and bulky, but I didn't buy this to be something i carry around with me everywhere. I can see how this drive can survive fire and flooding. Data transfers are ok, but not the most fastest, nor the slowest i've seen in a external drive either. I've yet had a fire to properly put thing to the test (and I hope that I won't). I would recommend this to anybody not wanting to or incapable of using/trusting cloud services for data archiving. The drive came with additional insurance to cover data recovery in the event that the plastic connectors are melted off during a fire (a nice plus).

Pros: Great protection, large capacity, and a reasonable price.

Cons: Its bigger than it looks and has some weight to it. Its no a deal killer but its not made to be carried around. This is made to sit on a shelf or in a fixed location. Great product though.

Overall Review: I work as the system administrator for a casinos surveillance department. Our video is recorded on blade servers, but when video clips are cut and saved for incidents, those clips are stored separately on a designated server. Since we are required by state law to maintain all recorded incident video clips for 5 years, our original storage server filled up and this product was purchased to maintain the stored video clips. We basically use it as a secure video storage system by dumping several past years of video on to it and then turn it off until needed.

Pros: Being fireproof and waterproof gives me peace of mind that should the worst happen to our house, our pictures and videos won't be lost forever. We tried backing up online for about six months, but with nearly 200GB to back up, that didn't end up being a cheap or efficient solution. Now I have the ioSafe Solo attached to our Airport Extreme, with everything automatically backed up via Time Machine.

Cons: None

Overall Review: I originally came across these drives several years ago when researching backup solutions for my mom's home business. Her only internet option is satellite, so online backups were out of the question. She has been using this drive without any issues for several years now.