Innodisk Shows off its Black Box SSD Draped in Orange

At Computex 2019 in Taipei, Taiwan Innodisk showed off a unique SSD design. The Innodisk Fire Shield SSD is designed to retain data even after bathing in direct flames at 800C for 30 minutes. As vehicles get more sensors including cameras, Innodisk hopes that the Fire Shield SSD can find traction in “black box” applications where data can be recovered from accidents involving fire.

Innodisk Fire Shield SSD

Shown at Computex 2019, the Innodisk Fire Shield SSD is said to have 20 different heat resistant materials. There are three layers of protection including a copper alloy, connector layer, and heat isolating lining. With over 20 different heat-resistant materials the concept is that the SSD’s NAND flash can survive a fire.

This is not a design where the entire SSD survives a fire and one simply plugs it in to get data off. Instead, investigators will need to get to the NAND flash modules, extracting them from the remains. The NAND flash modules can then placed into a test fixture and the data is extracted.

To get this level of protection, the SSD is a 3.5″ design and comes with relatively minimal amounts of storage for 2019. Capacities are currently listed from 8GB to 128GB of SLC/ iSLC NAND.

Innodisk Fire Shield SSD Video

Here is a video showing the Innodisk Fire Shield SSD being heated and then having data be recoverable.

During testing, the company set the drive ablaze then validated that the data copied to the drive matched the data that was recovered bit-for-bit which is important for forensic recovery efforts.

Final Words

We are not sure if this is the ultimate answer for the industry, but it is likely that we will need something like this especially as autonomous vehicles become more commonplace. As companies focus on bringing compute to the edge, environments become more variable and the potential for fire is greater than in most data centers. For those in the industry, this will seem like a semi-ironic product. A fire at the Innodisk booth shut down the exhibition floor at Flash Memory Summit 2017.