ByteSpotter: The See-Through Hard Drive

March 6th, 2011 by: Lambert Varias

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A company called CONVAR introduced an interesting line of external hard drives at CeBIT 2011. Called ByteSpotter, the case of the drive has a hole with a transparent cover over the platters, letting users see both the actuator arm and the platters in action. That’s not the only feature that makes the ByteSpotter unique, and depending on your tastes and budget, the other feature might be a deal breaker – various parts of the case are customizable, so you can have a unique, albeit thick external hard drive.

There are three face covers – the turquoise and orange Mohawk, the white and maroon Red Baron and the white, sand blasted Snowite. Unfortunately the picture above shows the covers exactly as they are, i.e. the names of the covers are actually printed on the covers themselves, an unnecessary embellishment in my opinion. Other parts of the case that can be customized are the bottom cover, which can be made of cherry, walnut or iron, and the grills and threads.

The hard drive inside is a 3.5″ 7200 rpm 1TB drive, with SATA 300, eSATA and USB 2.0 interfaces, with an option to upgrade to USB 3.0. So how much will this unique drive cost you? You can order a ByteSpotter from CONVAR’s website for €348 (appx. $487 USD). Yikes, I know. You can already buy a laptop at that price. Maybe CONVAR should consider releasing a version with only the see-through feature and sell it for much less.

[via Akihabara News]