A fire safe has one specific purpose and that is to protect your collectibles and your documents in case there is a fire. However, fire safes are not specifically designed to protect their contents from burglary. If they have a lock they will offer you minimal protection against theft. However, they aren't designed to withstand a physical attack.
What Are Fire Safes Made Of?
In most cases both the door, as well as the walls of a fire safe, are made entirely from insulating material. They don't even have any metal reinforcement. Because of that, a burglar who even has simple hand tools or a battery operated drill would probably be able to break into a fire safe in only a matter of seconds.
And since most fire safes aren't designed to be anchored in any one place, a potential thief could just tuck your fire safe under his or her arm and carry it away. As a matter of fact, some fire safes are designed to be portable. And that's part of their appeal.
That's because if there is a fire and you have your important documents in a portable fire safe you can carry them with you as you get out of harm's way.
However, hopefully you would not be at the scene of a fire. Then you would want to get a fire safe with a UL (Underwriters Laboratory) rating because many insurance companies require a UL rating in order for you to be covered by your insurance policy.
Typical house fires are less than seventeen hundred degrees. Typical fire safes are rated for 350 degrees for one hour in a fire that blazes at 1700 degrees. This means that the safe in question was put into a 1700 degree furnace for an hour and that within that time frame the inside temperature stayed below 350 degrees.
Why is that important? It's important because paper begins to char at around 400 degrees.
Most fire safes are designed to protect paper, and not media. That's because most plastics will melt at much lower temperatures. So you will want another way to protect things such as your computer discs.
And, because fire safes are insulated with materials that create a humid environment within the safe they are also not recommended as a storage place for firearms. However, fire-lined gun safes are a different matter. Although they will protect your guns they usually aren't adequate to protect your documents.
The bottom line is if you have documents such as passports, birth certificates, deeds, marriage licenses, social security cards, photographs, contracts, and such and you want them protected in the event of a fire you should buy a fire safe. Because their main purpose is to protect your paper documents in the event of a fire I think that you will find that they are very reasonable priced and worth it for the peace of mind they offer.