Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

While LaCie external drives aren’t always the best choice when it comes to value, they pretty much have no competitors when it comes to style. The Little Disk was designed by Sam Hecht and looks to be just a bit larger than your standard Zippo lighter. It has a high-gloss black finish and at the moment comes in either 30GB or 40GB capacities.

When you remove the cap on the bottom (or top I guess) you’ll find a retractable USB cable which ensures it never gets forgotten and more importantly, never gets lost. It also includes LaCieSync software which can be used to encrypt important data (with AES 128-bit encryption) or for automating backups of documents and even email. (via MS Outlook)

The 30GB LaCie Little Disk is available for $129.99 while the 40GB version is $159.99.

[ LaCie Little Disk ] VIA [ Ounae ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The Iomega Zip drive was a life saver when I was in University, since I was constantly shuffling around a lot of multimedia files for various projects or assignments. But like a good number of Zip drive users, I was horrified the day I encountered the infamous “Click of death.” Iomega did eventually repair my drive, but not before the problem damaged some of my disks, and the company’s reputation.

But Iomega has (somehow) managed to stick around, and at CES they’re showing their REV drive, which is basically the latest version of the Zip drive technology. But instead of 100MB, the removable cartridges now hold 70GB and are apparently pretty durable since the read and write heads are housed in the drive itself, with the cartridges containing the data platter.

Unfortunately at $599.99 for the REV external drive and $69 for a single 70GB disk, I can’t see how this can compete with the falling prices of Blu-ray burners. (Given a dual layer Blu-ray DVD can hold about 50GB.)

[ Iomega’s Zip Drive is back with a vengeance VIA CrunchGear ]

By Andrew Liszewski

A while ago I wrote about a Hip and Shoulder Holster that provided an alternative way to carry a small collection of gadgets and other accessories without your pockets bulging. Well it’s been brought to my attention that there’s an even better, if slightly less subtle solution called the Grabit Pack. It uses a belt like a fanny pack (and yes, I’m familiar with the other uses of the term ‘fanny’) but hangs down the side of your leg instead. And for added security and to prevent it from bouncing around, it actually attaches to your thigh with another smaller belt.

I’ll be quite honest that I would never use something like this for my day to day misadventures, but I can see many opportunities where it could be quite handy. Specifically when it comes to physical activities where a backpack would be too cumbersome, but there’s still the risk of things falling out of your pocket. And because of where the Grabit Pack sits, it doesn’t interfere with something like a tool belt if you’re a carpenter, and actually makes it easier to access its contents. In fact, dare I say it seems like the perfect accessory for wandering around the CES show floor keeping your phone, camera and other gadgets easily accessible.

The Grabit Pack is available directly from the company’s website for just $23. Unfortunately at the moment the right side version is sold out, which is actually good news for south paws.

[ Grabit Pack ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Compact flash cards are slowly but surely being pushed out of the digital camera market by SD cards, but there are still plenty of cameras, particularly digital SLRs, that rely on the older format. So companies like RIDATA haven’t given up on CF just yet, and to prove it they’ve just introduced an updated version they call the SMART compact flash card.

As far as I can tell what makes these cards ‘SMART’ is a new internal data monitoring system that works to ensure you never experience any data loss. While having 16GB of storage in your camera is great, it’s not a pleasant feeling when something happens to the only card you’ve been shooting with the past few days. And besides extra data monitoring, the cards also include embedded error correction code (ECC) that supports “two random bits of a sector on-the-fly ECC corrections.” I’ll assume that’s a good thing.

The new cards even offer longer reliability, with a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of 5,000,000 powered-on hours, and 100,000 times of program/erase cycles. The SMART CF cards will be available in two series, a Supreme 150X version with a capacity of up to 8GB, and a Lightning version with a capacity of up 16GB.

[ RIDATA SMART Compact Flash Cards ] VIA [ Digital Photography Review ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’ve been enjoying my Asus EEE PC for the past few weeks now, but filling up its 4GB drive that was already over half full with the OS wasn’t difficult. So I’ve been on the hunt for a considerably larger external USB drive that’s compact and won’t drain my battery.

The good news is that this new 100GB SSD external drive from Buffalo perfectly fits the bill. It has an integrated USB cable and when you compare the size of the USB connection to the rest of the drive, it’s obviously a lot smaller than even a 2.5 inch notebook hard drive. The bad news is that we’re still in the infancy of SSD storage and this drive will set you back about $885, which is tough to justify when you can buy 2 more EEEs for that kind of money.

[ Buffalo SHD-UHRS ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Evan Ackerman

External HD designs don’t generally excite me. Most of the time, I just want it to store my crap without any additional fluff, you know? But, this USB HD concept from Green Banana does an impressive job of integrating aesthetics with functionality. The drive case contains an OLED screen, which changes depending on the contents of the drive. Each file is represented by a shape proportional to the filesize (and a color related to the file type, perhaps?), and as you add more files, the shapes diversify. Not only does it look pretty cool, but it shows you at a glance how much space is left on your drive, and can even clue you in on what the drive is being used for.

This is only a concept, but if you like the file visualization idea, you can download a free copy of the software that the IVY display is based on here; it’s called SequoiaView.

[ Green Banana ] VIA [ Next Nature ]

By Evan Ackerman

The Chocolate Portable HD may not actually be much more complicated than a USB hub and a bunch of flash drives, but its modular form factor suggests a variety of uses. For example, you could sort your files onto individual chocolate pieces, and then when (or if) you go to work, you can just take your work piece of chocolate with you. Each piece has a different label, and the center portion of the hub is a touchscreen that helps you keeps your files organized. It would be cool if there were some RAID options built in, too… Heck, while you’re at it, just stick Linux on there and make a UMPC out of it. Sure, that defeats the purpose, but it would be cool, wouldn’t it?

VIA [ Yanko ]

By Evan Ackerman

You say “tomato,” I say “tomato…” Okay, that doesn’t quite work in writing, but either way you say it, the Tomato D-18 is a slick little USB HD. Yes, USB HDs are a dime a dozen now, but this one is really small. The 60gb Seagate 1.8 inch magnetic HD is barely a third of an inch thick, and the brushed aluminum case doesn’t add much to that. It requires no external power apart from the USB cable, and has 3 LEDs and some attractive designs (as well as a bunch of color options) on the case. From the looks of it, the HD might be replaceable/upgradeable, but you’re actually getting a decent deal at the moment, with the drive and case costing a combined $110ish (a glance at eBay shows 1.8″ 80gb drives going for around $90). Nothing fruity about that, which is good, since tomatoes are vegetables, after all.

[ Playtomato ] VIA [ PMP Today ]

By Andrew Liszewski

From my own experience, the best way to ensure no one can recover files from an old hard drive is to simply dismantle it. Once all the screws get lost there’s no easy to way to reassemble it, and on top of that you get a set of wicked powerful magnets to play with.

But if the drive is still in working order and is large enough to be useful in another system, you might want to consider the Drive eRazer alternative. You simply connect the device to your old hard drive and it will erase all the files by writing a data pattern over the entire disk. If you’re extra paranoid there is also a ‘Pro Version’ that will perform multiple passes while writing random characters. A 250GB drive can be wiped in just under 2 hours and because the eRazer is a standalone device, it doesn’t require an actual computer during the process.

The Standard version of the Drive eRazer designed for 3.5 inch drives is $99.95, while the Pro version is $149.95. The Notebook Pro version is also $149.95 and there’s a Pro version ‘Versatile’ bundle that works on both drive sizes (using adapters) for $199.95.

[ Drive eRazer ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]