I am a digital photo novice and have a fireproof safe where I store my backup hard drive. I take it out once a week to copy digital photos, then unplug it and place it back in the safe....Do I need to be worried about the humidity inside the safe? Should I buy the "humidity rod" mentioned in another post? Where? how much? Is humidity still an issue with media storage safes?

maybe design a robotic hard drive that detects a fire, sprouts legs, breaks the damn window, jumps out and runs the hell away then watches the house burn down with you in it or not. just a thought. >: )

Nonoperating temperatures for hard drives are typically 70C.

I don't think the drive would overheat. Most large safes require dehumidifier rods (read: Electric heaters...) that put out a few watts (very similar to a USB drive actually) to force out excess humidity. I would keep the power adapter (and probably a small UPS) outside the safe. That would cause the power to fail in a fire (a good thing). The temps you're all posting for a hard drive to survive are OPERATING temps. I think non-operating temps would be much higher and the drive may survive, especially if it's in the bottom of a tall safe.

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I have developed a ventilated / fireproof /theft proof enclosure for computer hard drives. You just can't put a computer hard drive in a locked container without proper temperature control -- ventilation -- -- the heat buildup would tear a hard drive apart. The proposed container consists of an elevated fireproof lid allowing ventilation when the lid is in an elevated position. If the environment around the fireproof chest exceeds a temperature level of 150 degrees, a sensitive device deploys the lid to a closed position. When the exterior lid is in a closed position the chest and its contents are protected from fire and water. This fireproof chest can be bolted securely to the floor preventing theft. The present set up allows for USB connections, with maximum distance of about 15 meters. Allowing the hard drive chest to be installed in inconspicuous places. The unit can also be controlled by LAN cable or wireless, allowing placement any where on the premise.
AUXSTUFF@VERIZION.NET

Just a thought but you may want to consider cutting a small block in the ground of your basement (if you're not in a flood prone area) and dig a couple feet into the soil and line the ground up with wood support and vapor lining. The ground should be cool enough to help keep the heat down. Thoy ou may want to throw a few moisture absorbing packs into the case to help reduce condensation.

You may want to look into the Disaster Ready Drive. A fireproof hard drive,that connects to your PC or Server via USB or Fire Wire. It offers 200 - 400 GB of storage, with many configuration to meet you exact needs.

Errr... what styrpfoam? You're not talking about the probably flame-redardant material that seems to be lining the safe, are you?

Have fun cleaning off that styrofoam after a fire.

You should spend your time jerking off instead of inventing fire-safe data and media backups schemes that won't survive a fire. nimrod.

BTW, there is already a power toy that allows you to synchronize folders between two different sources. It's called SyncToy and can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx. Haven't tried it yet myself, but it looks perfect for this kind of thing. I was thinking about putting a waterproof container out in the backyard and running power to it. I could then connect it either via powerline or WiFi. It seems much easier to make something waterproof than fireproof and it would be unlikely that a fire in my house would spread to a far corner of the backyard. The neighbor's house thing that Anti mentioned is interesting, too. I live in a city and my WiFi signal definitely will reach over there (since I can detect about 4 WiFi signals from inside my house).

I'm planning on do a remote backup to my brothers house on a scheduled basis.

What if your hard drive dies?

Nice idea, but one major problem. That safe does not look to be "media-safe". Plastic will melt and hard drives will die in such heat before paper burns.

Seems like heat might be an issue. Is there any way for it to escape your super insulated safe?

I second the vote for Karen's Replicator. Very easy to use, and that's after months of goofing around with other pieces of freeware/shareway trying to find something that would just copy changed files from one place to another.

What about heat dissipation? Aren't you concerned about the drive or other components overheating?

With the Safe closed and everything sealed up, I would think that the Hard Drives would heat up and likely fry themselves over time. I would recommend checking what the temp gets to in the safe vs what operating temps the HD's can take.

Do you have any information about the performance of the safe in an actual fire? I would be worried that although the safe my be rated to keep paper from burning for a length of time, the interior would reach a high enough temperature during a fire to destroy the hard drive(s) of your NAS and so would be worthless.

You might want to investigate putting the safe in a neighbor's house. Depending on how your street is wired, the signals might bridge to an adjacent home over the Powerbridge interface.

You are aware that your safe has (only) Mercury Class I ?
Which means that after 30 minutes with an outside temperature of 1200 F,
your inside temperature will be below 350 F.

Your disk is only rated with storage temperatures below 160 F.

I guess in case of a fire your data will be gone.

One thing to verify. How hot does the safe get inside? A piece of paper can take a fair bit of heat before being damaged, but discs and harddrives can't.

If you haven't already, I'd find out.

If I were to replicate this project on a budget I would get something along the lines of this (http://www.buyasafe.com/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=236)
and drill two holes in the lid.(possibly a third if any of the components in the safe require grounding) Then stick a couple of bolts threw the holes so as to allow ac current in to the safe. Obviously checking to make sure that doing this wont just cues a short. if it does the the bolts would need to be insulated in some manner. Another possibility would be to file down the lip on the door to allow 2 wires to run in to the safe.

then open up a power strip and remove the surge protector and put one of the powerline Ethernet adapters and the surge protector in a enclosure on the outside of the box. The reason for putting the Ethernet adapter and surge protector in the same enclosure is to ensure a fast connection by keeping any bad wiring and the surge protector out of the connection between the Ethernet adapters.

finally on the inside I would connect all the power lines to the 2 bolts in such a way that if the bolts were heated buy a fire the connections would fall off to prevent any damage to the electronics. I think that soldering and weighing down the wires is probably the simplest way to accomplish this.

Does the HDD run constantly? I'd worry that the likelihood of the HDD failing is higher then your house burning down..

I've thought about getting a fireproof safe for this sort of thing. However, I've always wondered if it woud get too hot inside and possibly destroy the components if it truely is in a fire? Anyone have some info on this?

The only problem with this is that that firesafe isn't rated for media. Most fire safes will allow the internal temp to get to about 450 degrees. Fine for paper, but it will kill the hard drive. You'd be better off buying another NSLU2 and configure them to do RSYNC to copy the data to an offsite location.

This solution will not work, the interior of this fire safe will not get any hotter than 1200°F, and digital media is affected at tempertures above the 125 degree range.

The differences between a FIRE SAFE and a MEDIA SAFE are listed below

1) Fire safe, this is the type mostly sold in stores and are relativaly inexpensive.
They are intended to hold papers, jewelery ect, paper begins to char at a tempeture of 450ºF. To prevent damage to the papers inside during a fire the interior of the safe will not get any hotter than 350 degrees thus protecting your documents.

2) Media Safe Usually a special order in most stores and a lot more expensive.
It is designed specifically for media such as floppies, CD/DVD's, Hard Drives ect.
Damage to computer media occurs as low as 125º F. During a fire this type of a safe
will maintain a interior temperature as low as 125°F and 80% humidity.
Any type of media in a regular Fire safe will end up warping due to the interior
tempeture being higher than 125°F
LINK: http://www.sentrysafe.com/Series.asp?r=5

The product listing for the safe you have bought states that it is Certified
factory fire protection at temperatures up to 1200 degrees F for 30 minutes
LINK: http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?prodid=10035818&whse=&topnav=&cat=&s=1

I'm not familiar with Robocopy, but I have automated my nightly data file backups using a free program called Karen's Replicator found here:

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

It looks like it does the same sorts of things you use Robocopy to do; however, Karen's Replicator has a user-friendly UI that makes it easy to created automated backup jobs (no scripts or batch files needed).