ioSafe turns to crowdfunding for disaster-proof private cloud project

21.09.2012
ioSafe--an established vendor of disaster-proof storage--is turning to crowdfunding to raise capital for its next project. Earlier this week, ioSafe kicked off a to finance a new disaster-proof private cloud.

You're probably familiar with ioSafe. The vendor of has become a fixture of the annual CES conference with of the survivability of its drives. It has submerged drives in pools, baked them to a crisp in fires, driven over them with massive trucks, and . This year it . In every instance, the data remained safe and sound within the disaster-proof enclosure.

Now, ioSafe has its sights set on taking its background in disaster-proof storage and migrating it to the cloud. The vision is to raise $150,000 to develop a fireproof, waterproof storage unit that will bolt to the floor and safely store terabytes of data. That part seems relatively par for the course for ioSafe, but this product will include the ability to securely access it over the Internet from a smartphone, tablet, or PC.

As we've come to expect from ioSafe, the specs and resilience of the new unit are impressive. It will have a storage capacity up to 8TB--two 4TB drives in a hot-swappable RAID1 configuration. ioSafe claims it can withstand temperatures as high as 1,550 degrees Fahrenheit for up to 30 minutes. It can also survive being submerged in up to 10 feet of water for three days.

It may seem odd for an established player in the industry to turn to crowdfunding to finance a project. ioSafe is a respected name in storage, and one might think it should be able to invest its own capital in the new project.

ioSafe founder Robb Moore explains on the Indiegogo page, "We've developed awesome technology that combines computers with safes. We do outrageous demos to get attention. We build hard-core storage products and protect our customers with unprecedented support. Despite all our successes, the fact of the matter is we're a small 20-person company up against billion-dollar competitors -- we're a modern-day 'David versus Goliath'."