ioSafe 214 Fire and Waterproof NAS/RAID Storage Solution

After my backup hard drive failed, I went in the market for something new. Since I'm in an apartment, my fear is that one of my neighbors cooking could bring the building down with a fire, or some other travesty (If I'm not the one to do it first). I won't lie that the price tag didn't hurt, but if I ever have to put the capabilities of this thing to the test, it will be worth it in the end. Plus, since it uses 2 hard drives in RAID, if 1 fails, I won't lose all of my information again - pop the bad one out and pop a new one in. Setup of the unit itself took 10 minutes. Use the supplied "key" to open the IoSafe up, popped two WD Red hard drives in, use the key to close it, plug all the wires in, attach the key to the side (it had a small magnet), hook the wires up and go. The Synology interface on Windows 10 browsers seems nice and uploading is a breeze when it works (the Synology interface and JAVA don't always play nice on 1 of my computers).Out of the blue, the company's owner sent a "how's everything going" email, and actually responded to me pretty quickly over a few back and forth emails. That's pretty damn good customer service in my opinion. As we were emailing back and forth, I proclaimed "To justify the cost before purchasing, I wished there was a video on YouTube that would have all 3 of these things in it: set it in a hot fire, drench it in water, then drop it from an elevated height to simulate it dropping out of my three story apartment. There are plenty of IoSafe videos on YouTube, but not like that." I got a response back in 10 minutes, with the below link, of EXACTLY what I would have wanted to see. This video made me feel better about the purchase. All-in-all, I would recommend this product. I hope I never have to use it to its full potential of fire/water safety, but so far I do like it, and I'm happy with the purchase.Youtube: "ioSafe tattoo wager" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDHfuAYe39k

Superb fail safe solution for home NAS. See bottom of this review for actual product review/comments.As a long time Synology user (5 years now), the one thing missing has been physical disaster protection. Several times I pondered simply attaching a ioSafe Solo product to the USB port on my Synology NAS... but it seemed to be over-kill at the time for what I needed, so I simply set up a manual process for weekly backup of the NAS and stored the backup in my home safe. The ioSafe 214 solves this ongoing challenge very nicely and elegantly.Granted, the chance of fire or flood is pretty low for any given home, but it still can happen and when it does, it can wipe out every electronic device in the home. I used to protect against this by doing an NAS archive to a portable hard drive each week and locking it in my home safe which is fire and water proof. While that was a reasonable solution given the options available, it meant manual intervention every week on my part. And frankly, the human element is always the weak point in things like data protection.So my compliments and appreciation to ioSafe and their partnership with Synology. It gives me the physical disaster protection while allowing me to continue to use Synology technology (which IMO, is the best of the best for home and small office needs on the market today).You really need three backup locations to be sure you are safe, and one of them needs to be physical disaster proof. In my new setup, using the DS214, I have the original copies of files on my various computers at home, my main backup is to the DS214 using Data Replicator, and I have a redundant copy of the DS214 image on a WD Elements external hard drive. Since I have the DS14 setup for Synology Hybrid Raid, the chances of data loss are low, however, an external hard drive backup adds a final measure of data safety.PRODUCT REVIEW:A) Shipping and Packaging - Excellent packing for shipment by ioSafe. The unit, though heavy, is very safe for shipment in the factory packaging (which is how it is received when ordered via Amazon. Heavy density foam top and bottom retainers are used to hold and insulate the unit from any damage that may happen to the box in shipment. You need to be aware that this unit arrives in ioSafe box with product model, sn, etc. on it. So IF you are concerned about the product being left at your door, take that into account when ordering. I think Amazon provided an option for it to be shipped within an Amazon box, but I'm not positive on that. In any event, you can count on the unit arriving well packaged and safe from any harm short of a truck running over it during shipping.B) Product Design - WOW... this is a very well designed unit. Rugged and durable, yet easy to open and add/remove disks. Yeah, it's a bit on the heavy side.. but that is going to be the case considering it has a fireproof design (see ioSafe web site for actual photos and explanation of their approach. That said.. this unit is quite small considering (it has a form factor ~= to a PC minitower profile). I love the power button and display indicators on the bottom of the front surface. Is it worth the premium price you pay vs a standard Synology product? It is to me....Try making a fireproof and water proof NAS on your own at home....you will fail for certain. And for ioSafe... their design is simple, logical, and makes complete sense... so I fully support them being in business and making a profit on their value add here.. which is the fireproof/waterproof component of the product.C) It's 100% Synology DS214 inside - so what's not to like about that?! Seriously.... even for people new to the use of NAS in their home or small office... this thing should be breeze to setup and configure using the Synology Assistant which is native to the unit when you power it up. And Synology products and software just keep getting better every year. The only issue I had with setup was that I got search and detect failures when trying with Internet Explorer. Now that could be because I was impatient and trying to detect it right after power-up.... or it could have been something funky with IE. In any event.. I switched to using Chrome and had no issues immediately detecting the unit and going through the auto-configuration setup. It literally is as easy as simply inserting the specified web address and then following the directions and pushing buttons on the web interface when requested to do so.D) Reliability... well time will tell on that. But given my history with Synology products and software these last 5 years.. I expect literally no issues other then perhaps a random hardware failure (which is what warranties are for). I installed a pair of 4TB WD NAS Red disks into the unit.. since there are probably the best NAS disk family on the market right now and are on the ioSafe disk compatibility list. WD-Red and WD-Red-Pro are designed specifically for high reliability in an NAS environment. Please note: ioSafe has a much smaller list of certified hard disk products compared to Synology's...... but you know what.. they have the majors with the best reliability covered, so I don't see any real issue here. That said... choice of hard disk is, in my opinion, the one weak link in product configuration by a user. Why? Because people who do not know the differences in various disk products can and will install substandard or problematic disks.. and will then get frustrated and be unhappy with the product. So do yourself a favor... go to the ioSafe web site and check their compatibility list BEFORE you buy/install disks AND only make purchase choices based on their certified list.Other comments - The unit runs quiet and cool, and like all Synology hardware/software products..... they run well and with very little in the way of glitches or issues as long as you use them as specified. I plan to run this unit for 4-5 years before replacement and I expect no issues in doing so.If I run into any reliability issues over time.. I'll come back and comment accordingly.... but don't expect to see me back doing so considering the robust nature of the unit design and the reliability and functionality reputation of the Synology core design that the unit is built upon.

First unit has been DOA. Buyer Beware with these facts:#1-You MUST check the drive compatability list and ONLY put in drives they support or the tech support agents blame everything on your hard drives even though the unit crashes 30 times a day.#2-They DO NOT SUPPORT hybrid SSD hard drives. Period. Don't ask them.#3-Their tech support is email only. It is horrible. They tell you they will respond in 2-3 Days. It is horrible considering we are trying to get a business up and running on this unit. Time is money and they seem to think this unit is only for home users which I guess in seeing the failure of it, maybe it is a home user only device.#4-I like the idea of their unit being Fireproof and Waterproof (great concept), but they need to get it working without so many issues. After system reboot 150 Plus, I decided to return the unit and look into Dell NAS products.