IOSAFE Solo

Testers are impressed with the ioSafe Solo: They repeatedly try to drown it or incinerate it, but the Solo's safe-like case always manages to protect the hard disk (and data) inside. IoSafe says the Solo will protect data from a 1,550-degree Fahrenheit fire for half an hour or from being sunk in 10 feet of fresh or salt water for three days. Experts say it performs well, too, working nicely with both PCs and Macs. However, it's USB 2.0-only -- unlike the top-rated LaCie d2 Quadra desktop hard drive (*Est. $125 for 500 GB) -- no faster FireWire or eSATA connection is available. The Solo also doesn't include any backup software.

The ioSafe Solo weighs in at 15 pounds and is almost a foot wide, making it much bigger and heavier than a less robust external hard drive. Its thick walls include insulation with embedded water that vaporizes to cool the drive during a fire. The normal vents that allow the drive to cool itself under ordinary circumstances automatically close when water or fire threatens. The ioSafe Solo comes in 500 GB (*Est. $140), 1 TB (*Est. $230) and 1.5 TB (*Est. $295) capacities. It includes a three-year warranty and one year coverage for data recovery; you can up the data recovery to three years for $50 more, or get five years' warranty and data recovery for $100 over the base price.

The Wall Street Journal posts a video that shows the CEO of ioSafe drowning and torching his own device to prove its safety. BigBruin.com and TestFreaks.com go a step further: They test the ioSafe Solo's performance against a conventional external hard drive, and then try to destroy it themselves (by fire and flood, respectively). IT Reviews doesn't abuse the drive, but the review explains how the Solo's fireproof and waterproof safeguards work. Amazon.com has the most owner reviews for the ioSafe Solo, but watch out for fake-sounding ones.