I had one LaCie hard drive overheat and fail on me. Since then, I’ve always opted for external hard drives with fans. A lot of people leave their hard drives on all day, so it’s no wonder that there are so many heat-induced failures.

Thermaltake hopes to cure this problem with their new Max 5G dual fan hard drive enclosure. Your hard drive will remain nice and cool with these fans. The Max 5G has a pair of blue LED-backlit 80mm fans which are supposed to be “ultra-quiet”, and can handle 3.5” SATA I, II, and 6G Hard Drives up to 2TB. And since it’s USB 3.0 compatible, it can handle drives with a data transfer rate up to 5Gbps. It’s available for pre-order now over at Amazon for $52 (USD).

[via FarEastGizmos]

These cheery Xbox 360 hard drive shells replace your drive’s stock drab gray shell.

Each kit also includes a bright set of LEDs beneath its surface, which illuminate with a touch of your fingertip. Keep in mind that it looks like all the LEDs are red, so that might look a little odd depending on the color you choose. I think white or color-coordinated LEDs would have been a much better move.

They’re available in translucent blue, green, yellow, pink , clear and smoky black, and sell for just $18.91 (USD) each over at DealExtreme.

At the heart of the compact box is a 120GB 2.5-inch hard drive, capable of storing many hours of HD content in MPEG 2, WMV9HD, or DiVX formats. The tiny box has outputs for component video and coax digital audio, but doesn’t offer HDMI at this point. Regardless, those outputs should satisfy most of us with a high-def craving.

It’s even got AC3 and DTS audio processing circuitry, so you can have full surround sound if you hook it up your amplifier’s digital input. In addition to its video playback capabilities, it’s also a full-fledged audio server, with playback of MP3, WMA and OGG format sound files.

As is typically the case with these cool Korean gadgets, you’ll probably have a tough time finding one outside of the region. If you’re willing to deal with the overseas shipping you can find these for about 219,900 KRW (about $235 USD.)

Looking like a soft pillow of molten gold, the shiny hard drive enclosure is sure to draw stares the minute you place it on your desktop. LaCie is proving that accessories are no longer something you have to hide in under your desk.

The Lacie Golden Disk will retail starting at $189 for a 500GB USB-connected model. They expect to start shipping in late October.

If Donald Trump doesn’t outfit his offices with these, I’ll be very surprised.

[Press Release]

There is compelling evidence that Sony was testing a new 80GB model with the FCC a little while back, too. Well, don’t get your panties in a bunch, but here’s my (ugly) theory on why Sony is releasing an 80GB model…

Since Sony plans on removing the (costly) Emotion Engine chip set that currently provides full backwards compatibility with PS2 games, they feel the need to offset that a little with North American and Japanese consumers. We’ve already come to expect that feature, so I’m sure they realize that new buyers might be just a little grumpy when they strip it out.

The cost of an 80GB drive is negligibly more than a 60GB drive ($10 to $15 wholesale), and it would be a cheap “gimme” to include that in newer PS3 models. That said, I actually think that the 80GB model will replace the 60GB model and ultimately will not be an additional model at a different retail price. As an added bonus for Sony, if you give people larger hard drives, they’ll download more content, and they stand to make more money from their online store.

I could be wrong, but this seems like the most reasonable explanation for Sony rolling out a new version so soon after the original model launch.

You can upload tunes to the player via the radio’s USB port, can also use it as an external storage device for other files (though I’m not sure why you’d need to do that.) The AM/FM radio also offers timed recording of over-the-air broadcasts, so you can listen to radio programs whenever you want. It’s also got an audio input for direct encoding of analog sound sources. To enhance sound quality, they’ve also included SRS WOW XT acoustic enhancement.

The VJ-10 is currently slated for release in Japan this March, with no release date announced for other markets. Olympus has not announced a price.

[via Akihabara News]

The drive enclosure is literally a large mock version of a hard drive that you can place any 2.5-inch IDE drive inside of, and connects to your PC or Mac via a USB 2.0 port. While I tend to like computer accessories that have a decent sense of design, this one takes the cake for sheer absurdity. It comes in two variants ($18 and $20) depending on whether or not you’d like a backup button on your drive.

As storage size is rapidly approaching that of decent-sized hard drives, it would seem that these drives are really the future of computer storage. They consume significantly less power than mechanical drives, and can retrieve data at a much faster pace. The only thing holding back SSDs at this point is price, and that is expected to come down at a pretty good pace as production ramps up.

[via Ministry of Tech]

Both have 4-inch 640×480 TFT displays and can import photos from your CF, SD or SDHC memory cards. In addition to their large storage capacity, each can serve as a personal media player, with support for MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, H.264, WMV, and Motion Jpeg video playback as well as MP3, WMA and AAC audio formats. Data can be imported or exported to your PC or MAC through the device’s USB 2.0 port.

The P-3000 is rumored to retail for $499 and the P-5000 for $699. With price pressure from Apple’s latest iPod 30 and 80GB models as well as Creative’s way-cool Zen Vision W, I’m hoping Epson rethinks their pricing.

[via Akihabara News]

Simply feed in your camcorder or other video source via Composite or S-Video and RCA inputs for audio. The i180WHT provides adjustments for recording quality and length, then encodes the video into MPEG-4 format. The system supports 5th gen (30gb / 60gb) and just announced, 5.5th gen (30gb / 80gb) iPods with video capabilities.