Protect Documents, Data, and Uninsured/Irreplaceable Valuables

Fire and theft are rare, but devastating events. I keep my backup hard drive, passports, birth certificates, coins, stamps, and other important stuff in a fireproof safe. Check your homeowner’s insurance policy, many collections are not insured under most policies, but for me some of the stuff I keep in the safe is more sentimental than valuable. I have an older model of an electronic keypad Sentry 2 cubic foot Fire Safe  but have found that, either from my kids playing with the beeping buttons, or by design, that my batteries run down extremely fast. (I started removing them when I am not in the safe recently, to find that they last significantly longer.) They may have corrected the battery drain issue, but if I had to do it over again I think I might opt for the mechanical dial lock because I know it won’t have battery issues and will not be generating any battery waste. You may think that 1.2 cubic feet is large enough, but what I have found is that I was able to fill 2 cubic feet with important stuff rather quickly, and could use a lot more space, so the larger the better.

I also keep my USB backup hard drive in the safe. At the end of each quarter, I try to backup my main data drive, so that if something were to happen, I would only loose three months of data at the most. Some newer safes such as the Sentry Data Storage Chest and the larger Sentry 2 cubic foot Fire Safe with USB now offer USB cables that allow you to actually keep a backup or a main drive plugged in all of the time, which would allow users to setup live backups.

See more on why you need to Backup Your Data.

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