A standard fire safe is NOT going to protect a hard drive or other digital media. For that, you need a UL class 125 safe. That requires at a minimum, 5" thick walls or so (the one I use at work has 7" thick walls and a second inner door). As such, a small safe for this purpose does not exist.
A regular UL class 350 safe is for paper only. The environment inside following a fire will almost certainly destroy a hard drive, DVD or tape.
If you have a large class 350 safe, you can buy a Schwab Media Cooler to protect digital media inside. That's what I do at home.
n.b. an older version of the same model safe can be found with a UL class 150 rating. That rating is NOT suitable for digital media, and was designed specifically for storage of film negatives.
Basically, this thing has the footprint of an average refrigerator, and doesn't even have room inside for two milk crates. And all that only gets you a 1 hour rating.
I am not familiar with a smaller digital media safe that carries a UL rating, but because of the necessary wall thickness, getting much smaller starts to get pointless. By the time you reduce the exterior down to a box the size of a milk crate (what you're looking for), you'd be left with too little interior room to store even a single hard drive (perhaps even a single USB key...). Perhaps you could build something out of space shuttle tiles that has a thinner wall.
My advice for digital media is to come up with a way to store a copy of it off-site. Encrypted if possible. Even the smallest bank vault boxes can fit a small external hard drive (laptop sized drive). If the drive is encrypted, you could always trade storage with a family member or friend.
You could also trust it to a cloud backup service. That's certainly the most convenient method, because with the right software, backup becomes a continuous process that requires no intervention or effort.
Now if you're JUST looking to preserve stuff on paper, almost anything designed for that purpose will do. What comes out of the box after a fire may not look all that pretty, but even the cheapest Sentry fire box is designed to keep paper below the auto-ignition temperature when engulfed in a fire. Though if you're trying to keep register receipts, note that thermal paper will turn solid black at a much lower temperature. You can help protect the safe and help your odds by placing it in a closet (so it is already partly protected from direct flame), and ideally on a concrete slab (so it receives no heat from below).
I thought the First Alert 2190F safe for $434 delivered was a decent compromise from Supply Chimp.
Not waterproof, but a 40mm ammo box with gasket just [barely] fits and will keep your handguns/hard-drives from rusting, and there is room for a First Alert 3050F steel hanging file box.
This gives you decent fire protection and will deter a casual thief.
Throw a tarp over it and no one will find it in your garage.
I thought the First Alert 2190F safe for $434 delivered was a decent compromise from Supply Chimp.
Not waterproof, but a 40mm ammo box with gasket just [barely] fits and will keep your handguns/hard-drives from rusting, and there is room for a First Alert 3050F steel hanging file box.
This gives you decent fire protection and will deter a casual thief.
Throw a tarp over it and no one will find it in your garage.
Re-read my post above. Corrosion is not the issue. No amount of waterproofing will protect your hard drives in that safe from a fire.
However that looks like a nice safe, and a 2 hour rating is pretty good. If you want to protect a hard drive in there, put it in a styrofoam cooler in there. Your safe will keep the interior below the styrofoam's melting point, and the cooler will keep the worst of the heat from your media. A zip lock bag inside is fine for the water.
That's the point of the cooler. The electronic media must be limited to 125F anyway. An ammo can is plenty waterproof, but will also transfer heat incredibly well, so it offers little protection to your hard drives. You need something to insulate the 350F interior from baking them, and that's what the cooler does.
Use a secure, encrypted off-site backup service like Carbonite. Hard drives, even solid state ones,will eventually fail even without a fire. Carbonite is inexpensive protection and has redundant servers.
Or you could encrypt the back up hard drive with VeraCrypt and store it in your car or an outdoor weatherproof box.
Ken C
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