Digital Fireproof safe or bank safe deposit box?

passion4tech

passion4tech

Limp Gawd
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May 11, 2016
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I'm looking for best bang for buck most durable fireproof safe to keep my important items such as my blu Ray discs safe from fire. I use blu Ray discs to backup my important files such as my music, program files, & I backup files from my micro sd card to blu ray discs. A few months ago my neighbors house burned down in a huge fire from a lighting strike. I need a fireproof safe god forbid my important items such as my blu Ray discs get burned from fire damage. I recently bought safe deposit box from wells Fargo for $80 a month 5x5 box. Did I get ripped off?
 
I would suggest an offsite backup service. Most of them offer digital as well as will burn copies of your data
 
passion4tech said:
I'm looking for best bang for buck most durable fireproof safe to keep my important items such as my blu Ray discs safe from fire. I use blu Ray discs to backup my important files such as my music, program files, & I backup files from my micro sd card to blu ray discs. A few months ago my neighbors house burned down in a huge fire from a lighting strike. I need a fireproof safe god forbid my important items such as my blu Ray discs get burned from fire damage. I recently bought safe deposit box from wells Fargo for $80 a month 5x5 box. Did I get ripped off?
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Good lord yes you got ripped off. I have a safe deposit box that's 5x5 and costs me $75. A year
 
There is no such thing as a "fire proof" safe. They have a fire resistance rating for a specific temperature and length of time. Blu Ray, DVD, etch, would melt and be damaged beyond use in a fire scenario. Go with the safety deposit box.
 
Take your little safe you bought and put it in a couple trash bags and bury it in the back yard away from the house.

Dig it up twice a year for updated contents if so desired.

Profit.
 
passion4tech said:
You think that is better option than safe deposit box?
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You need a small fire-resistant box at home for important paperwork. Passports, birth certificates, etc.

Everything digital that's important you should have one local backup (a USB HDD, Blu-Ray, or whatever), and an off-site backup. What site and service you use depends on how much data you have and how often you update the backups. You could use Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive or Amazon Drive for a reasonable amount of stuff for no significant cost. There's a hundred companies out there offering good off-site digital backup, and they're all way cheaper and easier to deal with than a safe deposit box at the bank.
 
Yes I do. Its offsite and the chances of a well managed data center burning up in a fire is a lot lower than your little 100-500 dollar safe surviving a fire.

Think: Even if the safe survives. the heat mat still destroy the discs.
 
ChRoNo16 said:
Yes I do. Its offsite and the chances of a well managed data center burning up in a fire is a lot lower than your little 100-500 dollar safe surviving a fire.

Think: Even if the safe survives. the heat mat still destroy the discs.
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I don't disagree with your first point, but I do with your second. A media-rated fire safe will keep digital media protected at whatever rating it happens to have. Mome of them are good for an hour or so, typical rating is 1700F for one hour with no damage to the contents. Some of them are even water-tight so your stuff won't get ruined by the fire dept soaking the place to put out the fire.
 
Bandalo said:
I don't disagree with your first point, but I do with your second. A media-rated fire safe will keep digital media protected at whatever rating it happens to have. Mome of them are good for an hour or so, typical rating is 1700F for one hour with no damage to the contents. Some of them are even water-tight so your stuff won't get ruined by the fire dept soaking the place to put out the fire.
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interesting. Ill have to look a little more myself. I still feel as tho offsite is a great option.
 
ChRoNo16 said:
interesting. Ill have to look a little more myself. I still feel as tho offsite is a great option.
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I agree for most things, especially digital things. For the non-digital, I go with a good fire safe.
 
They have devices that can increase the capacity of your anal cavity so you'll be able to store your blu rays and more snug inside of your rectum. :woot:
 
1 hour ul 125 is good for a med sized fire for a fully engulfed burn to the ground fire 2 hour 125 should be the min. A full on tl15 3hour ul125 safe encased in concrete and steel is great if you have $5k around.
 
$80 per month is way steep.

Cheap option: Arrange with a nearby friend/relative/co-worker to keep a safe in each other's house. Use that for your off site backup storage.
 
Dead Parrot said:
$80 per month is way steep.

Cheap option: Arrange with a nearby friend/relative/co-worker to keep a safe in each other's house. Use that for your off site backup storage.
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Yeah you're right, I had a feeling $80 is too pricey. I wonder how I can get my $80 back from Wells Fargo?
 
Ok guys I feel really silly right now. I thought I had to pay $80 a month but it turns out I only have to pay $80 a year whoops lol So is that a reasonable deal?
 
passion4tech said:
Ok guys I feel really silly right now. I thought I had to pay $80 a month but it turns out I only have to pay $80 a year whoops lol So is that a reasonable deal?
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Yes that's reasonable and pretty standard rate. Just keep in mind that FDIC doesn't cover safe deposit boxes, and the bank will not pay you if anything happens to it like fire or flood. We keep some stuff in our box insured on a rider or whatever on our homeowners
 
Eickst said:
Yes that's reasonable and pretty standard rate. Just keep in mind that FDIC doesn't cover safe deposit boxes, and the bank will not pay you if anything happens to it like fire or flood. We keep some stuff in our box insured on a rider or whatever on our homeowners
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Wait what? I'm not understanding you. The bank will not pay peoole if anything happens in fire or flood? Wait how could a fire possibly damage the deposit boxes? The deposit boxes are super fireproof right?
 
passion4tech said:
Wait what? I'm not understanding you. The bank will not pay peoole if anything happens in fire or flood? Wait how could a fire possibly damage the deposit boxes? The deposit boxes are super fireproof right?
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They don't reimburse or pay out for safe deposit boxes because they don't know what's in them. I used fire/flood as an example, it's highly unlikely that your safe deposit box would burn.

At any rate you should have a copy of your backups in your house and one copy in the box.
 
$80 per year is ok. If you have other accounts with them, IRA etc, see if the amounts are large enough you qualify for a free box. Yes, the boxes are pretty fire resistant but a building collapse followed by a smoldering fire will likely cook any contents. Since most box contents are unknown to the bank, they can't insure them as they have no way to verify a loss. "Sure, that molten blob of gold was grandma's heirloom ring complete with 20 caret diamond."
 
Also bank vaults are not waterproof. If they have a flood things will get wet too.... Just a couple of weeks ago a bank in WI flooded and had to have all their cash replaced by the Federal Reserve.

I personally do not see the benefit of storing data backup discs in a safe deposit box myself though. Other backups methods are much simpler.
 
For a backup plan? The safety deposit box is the better option if you're keeping two backups. You want your backups as far apart as feasible. Waterproofing can be done with one of those food sealers and a ziplock (or anti static bag)(place item, heat seal).

For very important files you can't afford to lose, you'd want to create at least two backups. One could be an array/disk at your house or a cloud solution (pre encrypted), the other should be in another location entirely (friend's house, relatives house, bank vault, burried).

For my important files, they have a series of backups:

- Live copy goes on redundant array using File History in Windows or rsync in Linux.

- Weekly backups (changes) get packed and also backed up (WinBackup, Acronis, etc.). This helps protect file attacking viruses.

- All files on the redundant array are backed to an external drive odd or even. When odd is on site, even is off site. When even is on site, odd is off site. They're rotated monthly.


This gives you: hot (raid - spun up / live), warm (packed, but on site), and cold (off site, no power) levels of backup.

In this config, my house could burn down and I'd lose at most a months of data changes.
 
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