Thursday, December 20, 2007

Fire Resistant Safe Ratings and Products

Determining the best safe to meet your storage needs
There are several distinct differences between a fire resistant safe for paper and a fire safe for computer media or data backup tapes. This primarily revolves around the fire safe rating, either a UL 350 or UL 125.

The UL 350 fire rating means that the interior of the safe (during a fire) will not rise above 350 degrees F for the designated time frame (e.g. 1-Hour, 2-hour, etc). This type of fire protection is meant to protect paper documents. Paper chars and begins to burn at 451 degrees F (remember the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury?).

A fire safe with the rating UL 125 means that the interior temperature of the safe will not rise above 125 degrees F for the designated time frame (e.g. 1-Hour, 2-Hour, 3-Hour). This means that computer media such as DLT or LTO tapes, DVD's and backup CD's will be protected in a fire. This type of media safe will also protect your paper documents.

Once you have determined what you will be storing, then you can easily decide which fire safe rating you need to have. We carry both the FireKing safe and Schwab Corp. safe product lines to meet the storage needs of our clients. By having the best choice in the business we can better meet our client's goals for document and data storage.

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