BURN TEST! IOSafe N2 Fireproof & Waterproof NAS
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
3,256 words · ~16 min read
0:05
The Corsair Carbide Air540 High Air Flow Cube Case is great for air cooling or
0:10
liquid cooling. Check the link in the video description to learn more. It's
0:14
finally here, guys. The fire test with the IOSE N2 fireproof waterproof NAS.
0:21
Now, I was going to do something kind of ghetto with our fire test that wouldn't
0:25
really have been safe. And so, I reached
0:29
out to Western Digital, makers of the ever popular WD
0:33
Red. These are our preferred NAS drives around here. Speaking of preferred,
0:37
which NAS drives did you buy, Slick? Four 3 TB WD reds. Four three TB WD
0:41
reds. And did you get those for free or sponsored in any way? I paid them for
0:45
incredible retail price of expensive. Yeah. Okay. So, they're expensive, but
0:48
we do believe that they're worth it. They are rated for 24/7 operation. They
0:52
do come with 247 tech support. And of
0:55
course, they come with a longer warranty than most consumer grade drives. So,
1:00
they're rated for operation in anywhere from single to five drive operation
1:04
within a single enclosure. Any more than that, you're going to want to step up to an SE. And the main point of all of this
1:09
is we are going to be putting these drives inside our N2. We have gotten a
1:14
sponsorship from WD to do this. They're not giving us any money, but they're
1:18
going to be giving the local fire department like hundreds of dollars,
1:21
which is actually very generous of them considering that we're going to light their drives on fire. Um, but then
1:26
they'll hopefully still work to have us go down to their training grounds and
1:30
actually do uh a simulation of burning
1:34
down the NAS and then spraying it with water, which is exactly what this
1:39
fireproof, waterproof Naz is designed to withstand. So, I'm going to go ahead and
1:44
I'm going to throw our two WD red drives
1:47
in here. So, we've got an Allen key that's included for tightening these bad
1:51
boys up. And we are going to head down to the training ground to get this done.
1:57
Remember, the way that this works is that it actually sweats liquid from this
2:03
protective material around here. And then ventilation is still provided to
2:07
the drives by having these heat sinks around here take in air from the
2:11
outside. Now, the way that the N2 works, I go into this in more detail in my
2:15
unboxing of all things, but the way that it works is that it is allowing air to
2:20
pass through to cool the components inside while not allowing fire through
2:25
by having a baffle on the front shield right here so that there's no direct
2:30
line of sight for the fire and the flames to get into the drives
2:34
themselves. So, we're going to close this up. And I'm actually super excited
2:38
to do this. I've been looking forward to this for a while. So, we wanted to give
2:41
you guys a quick look at the burn room that we'll be using. So, here's the
2:44
IOSafe N2 Naz. Richard is loading in
2:48
pallets that we're going to use to feed the fire, get her going, get her up to a
2:52
pretty uh unacceptable temperature for a normal hard drive, and then uh we're
2:57
going to we're going to douse it off with the with the hydrant and hose that
3:01
you saw before. So, let's just give you guys a closer look inside here at where
3:05
we're going to be putting it inside the burn room. All right, so we're loading
3:08
up pallets. So, go ahead. Yep. And uh so you can see there's like
3:14
uh they they use this pretty often. So I'm told that the fire kind of goes up
3:18
here and curls around in the ceiling. And once Richard gets completely geared
3:22
up, you were saying how close can you get to to this fire?
3:26
Right about here, probably. All right. So basically, you can stand right next
3:30
to it. And about how hot are we expecting this to get? Uh could see
3:33
around 800. 900 probably. So 800 to 900
3:37
degrees Celsius. We've actually got a thermal imager that we're going to be using to verify the temperature and the
3:42
uh the IoSafe Naz is being positioned right here. So, this is this is going to
3:46
get pretty toasty. Is this pretty realistic for what you'd expect for if
3:49
this thing was actually in a house fire, what it would be subjected to? This is
3:52
probably worst case scenario. This would be around the most flammable heat uh
3:58
creating objects you could possibly imagine. You know, this would be sandwiched between couches and drapes
4:02
and basically all the worst things you could imagine. Excellent. So, here we're
4:06
doing a quick run through of how the thermal imaging camera works. So, uh
4:09
check this out. There's a bunch of different modes, but uh I'm going to go
4:13
with oh, I don't know. Let's just go with the most sort of colorful interesting one. You can see Slick's
4:17
hand pops out whether it's in red or whether it's in white here or whether
4:22
it's uh white is hot, black is hot, all the different things can be hot. But
4:26
let's just go to the super colorful one because that one looks like lots of fun.
4:30
So, go ahead and pull your hand away from the door. You can see it actually
4:33
still remembers where where he touched it. So if we look inside the room, we
4:38
can see the pallets right here. And we can also see the IO safe uh Naz right
4:44
there. This uh particular Yeah, there's there's Slick standing there. So this
4:48
particular cinder block was out in the sun and the pallets were out in the sun.
4:51
That's why they're quite a bit hotter than the rest of the inside of the room. So we're here with Captain Brian Ule who
4:56
is overseeing the operation here today. And just just to be clear, Township of
5:00
Langley Fire Department doesn't endorse the IO safe N2 NAZ or anything like
5:03
that, but they have very generously given us a pretty good cost on helping
5:08
us out here with testing it. Um, according to sort of what we agree is
5:13
what we'd say is kind of a reasonable simulation. So, how long is this going
5:16
to run? Uh, we anticipate it'll run about 20 to 25 minutes depending on the
5:20
temperature we can get it to. And that is your typical uh well typical uh time
5:25
frame from when a fire starts to people notifying the fire department that
5:29
they've got a fire in their house and then the temperatures that it will get to once we once we uh arrive in our
5:35
typical response time which is around 8 minutes. Okay. So Wow. Really? Yeah.
5:40
That's correct. Wow. That's outstanding. Okay. So we're going to hit probably you
5:44
said around 800 to,000 degrees peak. Yeah. We're going to target we're going
5:47
to target in the 8 to 900 degree range. over a thousand degrees, it starts to
5:51
break down the gunnite on the walls, which is our fire our fire coating for the walls. But uh we're going to shoot
5:55
for approximately 900 degrees at the seat of the fire. Okay. And then this is
5:59
going to be pretty much uh what you'd consider to be a pretty worst case scenario in terms of correct having
6:04
having a fire start right next to next to the the target target, whatever you
6:09
want to call it, is worst definitely worst case scenario. All right. So,
6:12
Richard, tell us about this gear. What do you got here? Uh well, we got our
6:15
mask. Uh kind of self-explanatory. Is it self-explanatory, sir? Is it? Well, and
6:21
uh I know there's a lot of gamers that watch this channel. I'm a gamer myself. So, this is actually a HUD. This is my
6:26
head is up display. Uh so, this displays lights, so lets me know how much air is
6:30
in my pack. I've got my clear command. This is a speaker. There's a speaker
6:34
right in the uh mouthpiece. It allows everyone to hear me. It's extremely hard
6:37
to communicate when you're in a fire. So, that's what I use that for. Then, of
6:40
course, we have the SCBA, which is the air bottle and uh the backpack. I have
6:44
my radio, which I'll be on, and I have our tick, which is our thermal imaging
6:48
camera, which uh I believe you just showed off. All right, so it's fire time. Uh Richard, you got what is what
6:53
is this? Sorry, what's this torch called? Tiger torch. All right, light
6:56
her
7:00
up. That looks like fun. That looks like
7:03
lots of fun. We ready to go? We're ready
7:06
to go. Let's do it. Let's light this thing. So, in he goes. because he's only
7:11
lighting it right now. It's okay for Richard to go in without his full
7:14
breathing apparatus and all of that noise. So, what we're going to do is
7:18
we're going to light her up. Get on out of there. We're going to
7:22
close the door and then we're going to check on it at maybe 3 or 5 minute
7:25
intervals. Have a look at it with the thermal imaging camera. Maybe leave it
7:28
open for just a just a couple seconds here so that they can get the fire starting. Yes, we are legitimately
7:32
lighting this thing on fire, folks. So, we're going to check on it every few
7:36
minutes and see if it needs to be stoked. uh see if we need to do anything
7:40
to to help make sure that we're reaching the temperatures we're going for here,
7:43
which as a reminder is around 800 to
7:46
1,000° F.
8:31
So before he goes in, you want to tell tell us how he's going to put out the fire. Yeah, Richard's going to perform
8:36
what's called an indirect attack where he's going to uh shoot a modified fog,
8:40
which is about 30° at the ceiling for 2 seconds. He's going to let the steam
8:44
from the water droplets rain down on the fire. It'll help darken it down. Then
8:49
he'll narrow his pattern a bit and then attack the fire directly on. Should only
8:53
take a couple of minutes. Here he goes, guys.
9:12
You want to give the Naz a good spray just for good
9:17
measure. Can't see that all.
9:23
All right. So, we're surveying the damage. Now, on the left side of the
9:26
unit here, you can see the steel enclosure didn't really discolor too
9:30
much and didn't really bow out too much. Although, it did bow a little bit.
9:34
Whereas, on the right side, where it was right next to the fire, even in the
9:38
fire, it has discolored. And if you get an angle of it kind of from the front
9:42
here, you can see it actually bowed out a fair bit. So, it was it was warped and
9:45
deformed. The front ports, the front USB port, the SD card reader, these are just
9:51
empty holes now because all the plastic surrounding them has completely melted
9:55
away. You're not intended to reuse this NAS. You send it to IOSFE. They put new
10:01
drives in a new .naz and transfer your data onto that and send it back to you.
10:05
That's how the whole service works. Now, here on the back, you can see the only
10:09
thing left of the cooling fan for the unit is the four screws around the
10:12
outside. Other than that, it's just a mass of melted plastic. And this is a
10:17
little bit surprising, but the gigabit Ethernet port and the two USB3 ports at
10:21
the back kind of survived, but then the uh the power input did not. So, once
10:26
again, I wouldn't even begin to consider firing this thing up.
10:31
Kind of survived as in after it's been fired up. Yeah, kind of survived as in
10:34
they like still have color, but they wouldn't work. Just putting that out
10:38
there. So, here we are, guys. We see a bit of a sharp contrast here between the
10:44
destroyed .naz and the replacement NAS. Now, you would normally ship this thing
10:49
back in its current state to IOSFE. You
10:52
would not do any of these uh any of this taking apart on your own
10:57
because wow, it's like you hear that
11:01
sound. Okay. because you you don't know what you're doing and you don't know
11:05
what you're getting yourself into necessarily with respect to sort of
11:09
water the water seals having water getting into them or whatever whatever
11:13
other problems there might be. You want to be real careful about this and just
11:16
let IOSFE take care of it for you. But of course, we are not that patient. So,
11:20
we wanted to just take this bad boy apart and show you guys what's up. So
11:25
you can actually see the material that we had inside the N2 has uh got some
11:31
sort of burn marks on it here, especially around the edges. But you can
11:35
also see that there's still some condensation on the inside of the
11:40
plastic sheathing that's over top of it.
11:43
And right here up against where the drives are, there's no no burn marks at
11:47
all. You can also see that on the right hand side or well I guess it would have
11:51
been the but yeah the right hand side of the unit um is much more burned than the
11:57
left hand side of the unit and that was because the fire was right there up
12:01
against it. So that was that was where it took the brunt of the damage. Okay,
12:06
so next up we've got the actual aluminum housing inside. You can see there's more
12:11
uh more scorch marks.
12:16
Okay. So, the aluminum housing here
12:19
serves a couple of purposes. Number one is that it keeps the hard drives cool
12:24
under normal operating conditions. So, that's where the airflow sort of covers
12:28
and it's got some heat sinks on it. Number two is it acts as the waterproof
12:32
seal for the unit. So, that keeps the water from the fire hose out. So, we're
12:37
going to go ahead and try and pry it off here. Okay. So, we just managed to pry
12:42
it off with a fork. I suspect what happened is the gasket around the
12:46
outside probably melted a bit and it looks like that may or may not have been
12:49
the case. Actually, it's in uh it's in not bad condition all things considered.
12:54
So, um yeah, it looks like just around this one edge on that one side where the
12:59
fire was touching the Naz almost the whole time. That's the only place where
13:03
we see any kind of a problem here. So, let's start with the drive that probably
13:07
got it a little bit easier in terms of the abuse that went
13:12
on. Okay. So, it looks pretty normal.
13:16
You wouldn't know that that was sitting in a fire for uh 20 to 25 minutes. All
13:21
right. Now, the abused one. Here we go,
13:25
guys. Let's go ahead and pull this out. It is highly recommended, actually, it
13:29
is required that you let your drives dry out completely before reinstalling them.
13:34
in another enclosure or doing anything with them. Um, our enclosure didn't
13:38
really get that wet and I don't think that the waterproofness was penetrated
13:43
at all and there isn't really any moisture left in the device to to go
13:46
inside here and bother it. So, we're probably going to be able to pretty much fire these babies up and I'll let you
13:51
guys know if if they still work. I mean, look at this. This was in this way and
13:55
there's no no perceivable damage to it
13:58
at this point in time. So, we're going to keep the camera rolling and we're
14:01
just going to time-lapse this because I want you guys to know that there's no
14:05
faking and no switcheroo going on here. If these drives have data on them, they
14:09
survived a 25minute fire.
14:29
No way. My precious my precious
14:35
pictures. So, there you have it, guys. I
14:39
I'm I mean, I shouldn't be surprised. Um I save told me it was going to work, but
14:44
still. You saw that fire. I mean, uh look at this enclosure. Oh, it's so
14:49
heavy. Look at the way that this side bowed out. I mean, we abused this thing
14:55
to the point where I wasn't necessarily
14:58
that, you know, convinced that anything was going to survive it. Look at what
15:02
happened to the cooling fan in the back that it's I mean, it's gone. It's
15:06
obliterated. You can smell it when it's closed. I know. You can still smell it
15:10
even uh even now. So, uh the idea is not to keep using these
15:15
drives. The idea is to pull all the data off of them and use different drives
15:20
now, which of course IO takes care of. But there you have it, guys. My precious
15:25
memories are still on the Naz. Let's
15:29
even see if we can play back uh Big Buck Bunny. Oh, it's an MKV. Okay. Well,
15:33
we'll play back like Oh, okay. MP4. Yes.
15:37
Open with Windows Media Player. Look at that. There's the old NCX tech tips
15:42
intro playing off of two hard drives
15:46
that were sitting this far away from a
15:50
th00and degree Fahrenheit plus
15:54
fire. Uh, thanks for checking out this video. Huge thanks to IOSFE who sent us
15:59
two of their NAS to make this happen and then WD who paid for us to go to the
16:05
training facility and set the whole thing on fire. Other than that, uh this
16:11
is just a Linus Tech Tips video. So
16:14
there's uh there's no sponsorship beyond that. So we were as interested as anyone
16:18
in finding out whether this whole thing was going to work. And that's again that's one of the reasons we brought in
16:22
a second sponsor to fund us lighting it on fire because WD ultimately doesn't
16:27
have anything invested in whether or not this Naz works. But I'm sure they're
16:31
happy to know that they have something fireproof to recommend to their
16:34
customers at this point. So uh there you go guys. Like this video if you liked
16:38
it. Dislike it if for whatever reason you disliked it. I thought it was awesome though. Leave a comment letting
16:42
us know what you thought. And as always, don't forget to subscribe.