ioSafe Rugged Portable Hard Drive

Another item that we showed in our severe weather preparedness segment on "Wake Up With Al" this past Friday was the ioSafe Rugged Portable Hard Drive, pictured below:

This item is available via the web at RadioShack.com.  This is the second most popular item (per e-mail comments & questions that I've received) that we featured on the show, right behind the NOAA Weather Radio with Skywarn band that I featured in this recent post.

Why, you ask, would a portable Hard Disk need to be part of a severe weather preparedness kit?  It's all about data preservation.  I spoke to a gentleman today who lost important papers in a hurricane some 4 years ago, and that loss is still causing great difficulty for him today.  Countless victims of this year's deadly tornadoes in Joplin, Tuscaloosa, Birmingham and other areas lost thousands of digital family photos, important papers and other documents when computers were destroyed.

With a device like the ioSafe, you can scan important documents (like wills, auto & property titles, social security cards, passports, etc.) into your computer, back them up on the ioSafe and rest assured that you'll have another copy of those important items if disaster strikes.  

Not only do I recommend backing-up important legal & identity related documents, but also priceless family photos, movies, etc., can all be digitally stored for safe keeping on a device like the ioSafe.  A natural disaster doesn't have to strike in order for this to be important - your computer could simply crash and your hard drive be wiped clean with the data unrecoverable.  Regardless of the scenario, a device like the ioSafe will give you peace of mind that your important photos, documents, etc., are backed-up should you need them in any event.

Once you've backed-up these items, I highly suggest placing the ioSafe in a safe deposit box or other off-site, secure location for additional protection in the event of a disaster.

The model that we showed on Wake Up with Al is a 250gb version which retails for $149.99.  ioSafe Hard Drive's are available with capacity all the way up to 1tb!

This device is virtually indestructible.  It can withstand a crushing force of up to 5,000 pounds, can be submerged in water (salt or fresh), and was even shot with a shotgun at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, as shown in the video below (go to about 3:08 into the video for the real action):

In each of the scenarios described above, the data on the drive was fully recovered!

So, whether you're putting together your hurricane preparedness kit for this year, or developing your severe weather safety kit for next spring, please be sure to include this type of device in your plans.