ioSafe Jolts Thunderbolt SSD RAID With 1,000,000 Volts
Easily the most hair-raising demonstration in Las Vegas at CES 2012.
You may remember from previous CES events from years past that ioSafe makes "disaster proof" storage hardware and it likes to set up fairly over-the-top demonstrations on its products.
At CES 2012, ioSafe was showing off the $299 Solo G3 external hard drive that is both waterproof and fireproof. If it happens to find itself near flames, it will be able to handle 1550°F or 843°C for 30 minutes. Should the Solo G3 be dunked in water, it's rated to 10ft of submersion for 72 hours. In any case, ioSafe includes $1000 worth of data recovery service.
For its CES 2012 demonstration, ioSafe once again held it away from the convention center. This year they enlisted the help of Dr. Megavolt (Austin Richards), who works with Tesla coils to create great spectacles using lots of high voltage electricity.
CEO Robb Moore brandished a hard drive enclosure that looked very similar to the one that we sent bullets at last year, but this one was packing a dual SSD in RAID.
Prior to the shocking demo, Robb loaded up the SSDs in front of our eyes with data, along with a custom text file of our choice. Then it was time for Dr. Megavolt to get to work.
After putting a million volts through the drive, the ioSafe team plugged it right back into the MacBook Air and all the data was completely intact. We heard that in some cases the extreme electricity would fry the RAID controller, but then a quick replacement of the controller (rather than the drives) would be enough to make the data accessible again.
Special thanks to Chris Grundy of Cool Tools for playing the stand-in host at our demo.
It's not the Volts that kill you, it's the Amps !
Goes to show you, the Italians are cool but the French will do you in :-)
It's not the Volts that kill you, it's the Amps !
Goes to show you, the Italians are cool but the French will do you in :-)
So yeah, that demo is valid and the drive is tough.
In electronics, too much current is basically the source of death. However, electric circuits have a fixed resistance. Too much voltage is then exactly the cause of too much current, unless you have a fuse. So, asking for 1MA or asking for a high current test is basically asking for an overvoltage test. Think about what happens when you overvolt your CPU. If it's the current that kills you and somehow these aren't related, then your CPU should run fine at 12V -- if you could cool it. But it doesn't, does it? Think about when we had 3.5" floppy drives and you plugged the connector on backwards. You reversed the 5 and 3.3V lines, right? And then that magical blue smoke came out and it no longer worked...
And yet static electricity that we can hold (only about 20k to 25k volts with very little amps) can fry electronics. Im sure that coil is packing more punch than that...... Just saying......
Kaboom?
True Story, I served on the Coast guard cutter Diligence and worked in the galley as a cook.
I was cleaning a flat to grill for an inspection and my right hand pointer finger touched a live wire.
When being electrocuted your muscles flex, so with both hands grabbing the flat top grill I took a 440 or 480 3 phase voltage I don't remember the exact voltage..but a 50 amp breaker tripped which saved my life.
I ended up with third degree burns on both my hands. MY left hand had a hole the size of a nickle in it. My crew mates called me sparky for the rest of my tour on that ship.
Not sure what my point is but I'm pretty sure there was some data loss in my brains hard drive.
Remember kids its the Amps and not the volts
So folks remember you need the voltage potential to put the skin into the conduction region and you need to be sure the supply can provide the current needed to kill. In other words YOU NEED BOTH to kill you. If any of you wish to doubt me then I will wager $100 dollars against all of you that my car battery will not kill me. I will grab both terminals just to prove my point. If you do not know about electronics then you people cannot comment on such areas that are not your expertise. Stick with what you know.