safe

Lord of the Tapes: Return of the Fire King

OK, well it’s the first Fire King I’ve purchased and I hate Lord of the Rings with a passion but I needed a title.

I have a Fire King DM2520-3 being delivered this Wednesday.  This little monster weighs in at a whopping 1050 lbs and will hold about 210 LTO tapes.  I only need storage for about 100 tapes, so there’s plenty of room for growth, documentation, CD/DVD media and other goodies we want to keep out of harms way.

While scoping out a fire resistant safe, I was given a few clear requirements.

• Get the best fire rating possible
  • The 3 hour rating may be overkill, considering a standard office fire temperature would be lower than the 2000 F heat that this safe is rated to protect against, so you can’t say I didn’t find the best available.  Actually, a 1 hour rated safe would probably suffice for most businesses considering if flame is in direct contact for 1 hour with your data safe then you’re probably storing your tapes in an oil refinery.  Heat away from the fire is a much lower temperature than the actual fire, and since most material/fuel will burn away fairly quickly, most 1 hour safes would do the trick.
• Theft protection
  • Considering this thing will take a locksmith a couple of hours to bust into if the front keypad melted off…it’s not easily broken into.  Plus you’re not going to get a few fellas to haul a 1050 lb box away without making a little noise and alerting security.

This puppy is also rated against 30 foot drops and explosions. I’m not sure what they test explosions with, but that would have to be a neat job.

I’m curious, what do you all use for storage protection?  Are there others out there with bigger, better and cooler physical media storage systems?

Comments welcome.