Vertical Technology Blog

About 4 years ago I considered myself a hardcore case modder.  I got a new case and took my Dremel to it and after 30 hours of work and many case fans later I had a computer case sporting no less than 9 LED 80mm fans complete with cold cathode lighting inside.  It looked great when it was lit up but it sounded like a B-12 bomber was in the room with you. 

Water cooling was always there, but out of my budget and to be honest I didn’t feel comfortable putting water that close to my precious gaming rig.  Hardcore Computer (www.hardcorecomputer.com) has an unexpected alternative.  They have created a dielectric mineral oil cooled PC they call The Reactor.  The really interesting thing is that the coolant is not piped throughout plastic tubing and blocks attached to critical points in your PC case. 

The whole computer is immersed in a case filled with the oil.  This has been done with a 10 gallon aquarium and cooking oil, but after a few days it will get a nice stench to it.  Standard platter hard drives are not used in their configurations.  Instead they use SSD drives so they can be submersed as well.  Hardcore Computer systems start out at $4000 and go up as much as $11,000.  Not a bad way to blow through your kid’s inheritance.

For a large company or a home user, the Fire-Safe waterproof hard drive comes in a nice size of 160GB and is claimed to be the world’s first and only fire resistant and waterproof hard drive.

Connects via USB, as expected, and allows you to backup your important files and photos while staying encased safely keeping your information until you need it. The company, SentrySafe, offers a support program that promises the will attempt to recover your data in the event of a fire or water accident.

Comes with backup software, password protection and data encryption to keep your data safe when not at risk of fire or water damage, too. A definite forethought, not afterthought, for data protection.

Honestly, so many say that RAID is a must-have backup choice but just remember a few things about it, before making it your number one solution.

RAID 1 is certainly great for helping you retrieve your information if the main hard drive fails.  Using a mirrored RAID can be a great choice if that happens but what about other situations?  It will not prevent malicious software issues that come upon you and attack your system, like viruses.

Why is RAID 1 a bad choice during those times?  Because, the way it works is to copy each and every file from one hard drive to the mirrored backup drive.  If the virus or malicious code is on your main drive, you get it twice, because it copies directly to your backup drive.

Your best solution in these cases, if not just drive failure, which RAID 1 is perfect for…would be a third-party application like Pexagon Technologies has available on the Store-It Pro 2.5″ Portable Hard Drives because you are choosing when to backup your information (with the press of a button) and you can choose only the most valid information to be stored (photos, music, documents) in case of a system crash due to a virus.