GadgetReview

Late last week ioSafe announced a larger version of their waterproof/fireproof hard drive, the 2TB version.  Previous versions were available in 500GB, 1TB and 1.5TB capacities.  Cost for the super tough hard drive is $399 and it’s said to be available at all major online retailers, including Newegg and Amazon.

ioSafe’s external hard drives can survive 30 minutes in up to 1550 degrees fahrenheit or 10 feet of fresh water for 3 days.  In event that either disaster occurs you’ll need a SATA dock to retrieve the drive’s content or you can use their hard drive recovery system which is included in the price.

And speaking of ioSafe, were giving away one of their disaster proof hard drives.  I’m not sure on its capacity but in order to win just drop a comment below and well select a winner at random.  If you become a fan of their Facebook page we’ll consider it a second entry, which will increase your odds of winning!

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Soon to appear in the style section of a men’s magazine, these new external hard drives from Brinell ooze some serious swank.  Available in leather, carbon, wood, or stainless steel, these drives go from 160GB’s to 500GB’s.

Each drive comes with a cleaning cloth for first impressions, a mini-USB cable, and back-up and sync tool software called PureSync by Jumping Bytes.

What won’t be so cool is the asking price:  Starting at $277 and ending at $337.  Boo!!  Better check if these things fit in your suit pocket before purchase.

[via GearDiary]

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While the mass adoption of USB 3.0 is currently a long, dark and lonely road, a few storage companies have come forth with details regarding their impending drives that boast such compatibility.

Coming December 11th (of this year) Dane-elec’s line of USB 3.0 compatible hard drives, called Superspeed, will be available for purchase starting at $149.99.  Course at that price you’ll be scoring just 500GB of storage, but drop another $100 (or so) and you’ll quadruple your storage capacity.  Throw a bit more cash around and you’ll get your hands on an SSD version, which of course will maximize the drive’s USB 3.0 abilities of 250mbps.  …Continue reading: Dane-elec Announces USB 3.0 Hard Drives, Superspeed SO

If you’re looking for media streaming on a very, VERY tight budget, then the Patriot media streamer is EXACTLY what you had in mind.  You’ll need to bring your own hard disk drive, but each Patriot comes with a remote, three USB slots, Ethernet support and support for several different file formats.

Sure, it’s not that great that you have to provide your own hard drive before this thing will actually work, but given the price of the unit and the hard drive itself, chances are you’ll be doing all right.  They provide everything else–all you have to do is bring your picnic basket and enjoy.

And when I said, “very, VERY tight budget”, I meant it.  This sucker retails for a downright reasonable $130.  Of course, you’ll have to tack on a little extra for the hard drive, but new ones aren’t so pricey these days.

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I’m not sure why you’d ever want a tiny spycam built into an equally tiny bedside clock–the less savory application would probably be too impractical as this is a VERY tiny clock–but just in case you’ve got an urge to keep a clock and a camera by your bedside, $47 will indulge your clock / camera desires with the Tiny Spy Camcorder Clock.

The internal Li-Battery will offer two hours of continuous use, and has four gig of built in memory.  It can also patch into your computer with an included USB cable so you can swap out data on the fly, clearing out the clock’s internal memory to continue recording.

If you’ve always wanted to watch yourself sleep, or just hope you can record something else, then the Tiny Spy Camcorder Clock is what you’re after.  Otherwise, I can’t imagine anyone either wanting or needing such a thing.

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At this point in the game it’s pretty difficult to make significant improvements on the good old external hard drive.  So what’s a storage company to do?  Simple.  Add a display that details the drive’s contents and storage capacity.  That’s what Verbatim did and now so has Western Digital.  They’ve added E-Ink displays to their My Book Studio and My Book Elite external hard drive that lets you add your own label and best of all it works when the drive is unplugged.

Read – My Book Elite
Read – My Book Studio

Thanko doesn’t exactly have a good record when it comes to their gadgets, folks, but here’s an exciting piece of news–apparently their MP4 viewer is coming to be regarded as a solid buy!

Now that’s exciting enough as it is–it’s almost like saying “Man, this fried cockroach tastes delicious!”–but not only will this little item, the DIGITAL MP4 AudioPlayer AV, play your MP4 videos, but it also serves as a digital camera.  It has 8GB of onboard memory, with miniSD cards fully supported, even if they only work with Microsoft XP and Microsoft Vista.

Moreover, it also includes a 4.3-inch screen, a mini remote, two mini speakers and an estimated battery life of four to six hours, making this one of the most portable media viewers ever.  Thanko is already selling this device to Japanese customers–word is that the English store will be selling it soon, in case you want to take the chance that this is Thanko’s best product ever.

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How much storage does it take to store a human life?

That’s a dangerous and highly subjective question, but according to Gordon Bell, a researcher at Microsoft, the average human being’s life requires three hundred and fifty gigabytes to adequately store it all.

On the surface, that seems low.  Given that the average two hour DVD runs about four gig, on a strict conversion scale, three hundred and fifty gigabytes would represent about eighty eight, give or take a few minutes, hours of video.  A human life is vastly more than eighty eight hours of video.  But then, we really don’t know what kind of compression or resolution we’re talking about–after all, my last dream involving sideswiping a Rolls-Royce that had Caterpillar-style tank treads instead of tires really wasn’t anywhere near the resolution of a regular DVD, and it absolutely didn’t have anything on Blu-ray.

But what this means is even more interesting.  Or exciting, or terrifying depending on how you choose to look at it.  Any schmuck off the street with a part-time job can afford a terabyte hard drive.  That’s effectively enough to store his entire life and consciousness almost three times over, and four times if he pops for the one and a half terabyte model.

So the question remains…how long before someone tries the upload?

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With no market seemingly unreachable for LG, the new XD3 series of hard drives should appeal to those seeking an affordable, portable, and stylish hard drive.  Looking like they are ready for some custom engraving, the capacity of these hard drives maxes out at 500GB and connects via USB 2.0 or SATA II.

Each drive is only 13mm thick and a 320GB model for $90 should be appearing in Europe and North America before the end of the year.

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How do you prevent your hard drive from being stolen?  Simple, you stuff it inside an original Nintendo Gameboy.  At first glance, it looks like a full working Gameboy with a massive amount of storage.  Sadly, it’s devoid of any game operation and that screen shot you see is in fact a piece of paper with a graphic printed on it.  It’s maker then stuffed a 2.5-inch 80GB SATA drive into the portable gaming system’s back along with the hard drive’s LED status light and USB ports.

Now that I think about it this might garner more attention than not, since it very well could be the coolest hard drive mod I’ve seen to date.

[via Hackaday]

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