What is a Fire Data Safe?

If you have a question not answered here please use our contact form. We will be delighted to answer your questions or forward to you further information

What is the difference between a Fire safe and a Fire Data safe?

A Fire safe is designed to protect paper documents from Fire and Smoke damage by keeping the internal temperature of the safe below 170 degrees centigrade. However a Fire Data safe or media safe is designed to keep the internal temperature below 52 degrees centigrade in order to protect plastic based data from being damaged. Fire safes will NOT protect vital tape back up data, nor film, negatives nor microfiche – Fire data safes will..

What is the difference between a 2 hour data safe and a 2 hour data safe tested to EN1047-1?

Basically the 2 hour test for the EN1047-1 standard is far more stringent as the data safe must remain in the furnace to cool, whilst other test standards allow the fire data safe to be removed immediately from the furnace. Obviously the EN1047-1 fire test is a more realistic environment as it would be unlikely that your fire data safe could be removed from the building to cool down. In additioin the EN-1047-1 test includes the following procedures – 9 metre drop test to ensure would not expose the stored data in the event that the safe fell through one floor to one below as well as magnetic and radiation contamination test that could wipe or damage your vital tape data. This maybe overkill for some requirements, but you pays your money and takes your choice.

Can I use a Data Fire Safe to store cash or jewellery?

Data Fire safes are principally designed to protect plastic data such as back up tapes, CD/DVD ROM, hard drives, photographic negatives, video tapes etc. from fire. All have security locks fitted, but few are designed also to protect cash or jewellery from determined thieves – although their weight will make it very difficult. Check out the cash rating and whether the safe can be bolted down if you need the safe to offer a dual protection.

Can I use a Data Fire Safe to protect paper documents and digital media as well as tape data?

Data Fire safes are designed to protect back up tapes from fire, but they can also be used to store digital media such as hard drives and USB sticks as well as vital paper documents. You can also choose to purchase a Data Combi Safe, which is essentially a Fire Safe for paper documents, but has an extra internal fire resistant compartment to protect tape data.