Recently in Storage Category

The company that brought style to a deadly dull product category released a revamped model line today. Fabrik, of San Mateo, Calif., a maker of external hard drives for computers, pulled the wraps off new versions of its SimpleTech SimpleDrive and Signature Mini products and introduced the eco-friendly [re]drive.

The new SimpleTech SimpleDrive family have storage capacities that range from 320 gigabytes ($99) to one terabyte ($259.99). Designed to be stacked either horizontally or vertically, the drives feature a new Turbo USB 2.0 interface that's 25% faster than traditional USB 2.0. What's more, the hardware has built-in cooling vents so it doesn't need a fan to contribute to the noise pollution of an office.

New colors have been added to its Pininfarina-designed Signature Mini drives. In addition to Black Cherry, Blueberry and Espresso the sleek portable storage devices also come in Cayenne and Ice. Storage capacities for the drives range from 160GB ($99) to 500GB ($229.99).

Packaging for the drives is 100% recyclable and their enclosures are made of recyclable plastics.

Fabrik is billing its new SimpleTech [re]drive as the world's most energy-efficient, resource-conscious Turbo USB 2.0 external storage and backup drive on the market.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which CompactFlash is fastest of all?

Well, according to VARIndia, it's the Transcend 300X 16GB CF, which can transfer information at more than 50MB per second. The publication reported that the card's speed was verified by independent tester Rob Galbraith, who maintains a CF/SD performance database for photographers at his Digital Photography Insights Web site.

Transcend executive Austin Huang told the trade periodical: "We are extremely proud of the fact that among the 130 memory cards tested, the new Transcend 300X 16GB has emerged as the world's first CF card to have broken through the 50MB/second barrier. With the impressive transfer speeds and enormous storage capacity of Transcend 300X CF cards, we are confident that photographers, both professional and amateur, and all other power users will appreciate the excellent performance offered by the product."

At Transcend's Internet shop, its 16GB 300X is selling for $205.99. The company also makes 300X CF cards in smaller sizes. A 4GB card sells for $64.70 and an 8GB card for $120.

Let's face it. External hard drives aren't much to look at. Nevertheless, that hasn't discouraged drive makers from trying to add some sizzle to their storage boxes. Fabrik led the charge in this market with its Signature Mini drives designed by Italian styleshop Pininfarina. Now that grand old house of storage Western Digital is getting in on the fashion act by announcing today a new line of My Passport Elite USB portable drives.

The lightweight WD drives weigh in at under five ounces and come in four colors--bronze, titanium, westminster blue and cherry red. (When simple colors like red and blue have adjectives, you know a company is trying to to do more than appeal to a consumer's hidden geek.)

The units have a "soft-touch" finish that makes them easy to hold and gives them tactile appeal.

Two capacities are being offered: 250GB ($189.99) and 320GB ($219.99). WD estimates that the 250GB drive can hold 71,400 digital photos and the 320GB drive, 91,400 images.

The devices are powered through their USB cables. I've found that that arrangement usually works better with desktops than laptops. To address that problem, makers of these drives include a double-headed USB cable with their units so they can draw sufficient power from two ports simultaneously. The drawback with that is you lose two USB ports to the drive, not just one, which can be vexing given the limited number of USB ports on some notebook computers.

A capacity gauge is incorporated into the drives to quickly assess disk usage and the drives have plug-and-play capability for gaming consoles. Software packaged with the devices facilitate automatic backup and synchronization of data. The units also carry a five-year limited warranty.

Although digital photography may have reduced the need for conventional storage mediums like shoeboxes and photo albums, it has upped the demand for magnetic alternatives--alternatives that need not be locked inside a computer. Such alternatives were released this week by Transcend Information, a worldwide maker of storage products headquartered in Taiwan. The new offerings were a rugged external hard drive, the 250GB StoreJet 25 mobile ($176.99), and two spacious USB "thumb" drives, the 32GB JetFlash V60 ($178.99) and the 16GB JetFlash V85 ($104.99).

Although the difficulty of uploading photos to a computer from a digital camera has eased over time, there's still a measure of inconvenience associated with the task. That inconvenience often results in memory cards being stuffed to capacity before they're dumped to a computer and shots being lost to "out of space" errors. So it should be no surprise that a little gadget called the Eye-Fi has received a chorus of cheers from many quarters for its marriage of storage and wireless transfer for digital cameras.

Nuptials between Wi-Fi and digital cameras are nothing new. Kodak, Nikon and Canon--to name a few--have been shipping cameras with wireless capability for years. And although initial efforts were a bit clumsy and problematic, the camera makers have improved their wares since their introductions. However, the Eye-Fi approach is one of the slickest that I've seen to date.