Olive's music players are the kind of crazy high-end AV hardware that peasants like you and I shouldn't even be reading about, let alone contemplating. The 4 HD rips CDs to its huge 2TB hard drive, in addition to streaming from a PC, to be played through crazy high-end speakers. It's got a nice 4.3-inch touchscreen, and it's pretty nice-looking. So what's new? Well, the ports are all gold-plated, and the 4 HD adds a DAC the Opus N4 didn't have:

* Proprietary, high resolution DAC featuring Texas Instrument's 192khz/24-bit Burr-Brown PCM1792A.
* DAC may be used as an outboard DAC for any digital music source. With 24-bit/192kHz oversampling, noise and distortion are ultra low resulting in incredible purity in both high frequencies and low-level detail.

Basically it's a super simplified music player (just music, mind you, no other media) for incredibly rich old people for whom the CD is something they've just gotten comfortable with in the last six months or so. It's pretty, we'll give it that, but it seems like the kind of thing you'd see in SkyMall, not your buddy's entertainment center. It's available now for $2,000. [Olive]

LAKE FOREST, Calif., July 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WD (NYSE: WDC) today announced two new mobile hard drives that reach new capacity extremes. The highlight is a one terabyte model — the industry's highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive available. Industry-leading 333 GB-per-platter technology enables the new WD Scorpio® Blue(TM) SATA 2.5-inch hard drives to offer mobile storage device and notebook users an enormous 1 TB capacity. A 750 GB WD Scorpio Blue model also will be available.

The WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB hard drives have a 12.5 mm form factor(1) and are ideally suited for use in portable storage solutions, such as the newly released My Passport(TM) Essential(TM) SE Portable USB Drives. Other applications include select notebooks and small form factor desktop PCs, where quiet and cool operation are important. Both WD Scorpio Blue drives deliver high-performance with a 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) transfer rate.

"The convergence of the growing mobile computing and digital media trends produces demand for desktop-like capacities in portable devices," said Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of client systems at WD. "Our new WD Scorpio Blue drives enable people to take even more of their digital collections with them wherever they go and, realizing the value of their data, back up their notebooks on their My Passport drives."

WD Scorpio Blue hard drives offer high-performance, low power consumption and cool operation in portable applications. They are designed with WD features to be reliable and shock resistant while also delivering industry-leading capacity and performance.

WD Scorpio Blue Features

WhisperDrive(TM) - WD's exclusive WhisperDrive technology combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to produce one of the quietest 2.5-inch drives available.

ShockGuard(TM) - Leading-edge ShockGuard technology combines firmware and hardware advancements to meet the highest combined shock tolerance specifications required for mobile and notebook applications.

SecurePark(TM) - Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface, resulting in improved long-term reliability due to less head wear and improved shock tolerance.

Price and Availability

WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB drives (model WD7500KEVT) are available now through select distributors and resellers; the 1 TB capacity (model WD10TEVT) is available now configured into My Passport Essential SE USB drives. The manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) for the WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB drive is $249.99 USD and for the 750 GB version it is $189.99 USD. WD Scorpio Blue hard drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty.

The drive didn't mount. It spinned up, but nothing happened. The BIOS didn't show anything and the noise, that horrible rattling noise of a thousand-cockroach horde running viciously through a tin tube, kept roaring. "Something is very wrong here," he thought after trying every trick in the book. It was then when he decided to open the drive on the bench at his Spring/Nextel's tech support office. Voiding the warranty of the new Fujitsu MHV2040AH drive, he was shocked when he found this mess:

"Shattered? How the heck can a hard drive plate be shattered in this way? This is not possible."

The drive was new and there were no visible marks outside. And as you can see in the images, the drive plate shattered on its own. Somehow. There are no signs of hammering or violence anywhere, except for the metal shards themselves. Chris swears that this is what happened and has no explanation about it, except that the 10,000rpm engine of the drive may have gone crazy at one point. I find that unlikely but who knows. Any expert in hard drives out there can tell us how this may happened?

While you think, here's some good music that matches the theme of this post (at least in its title). [Thanks Chris]

The author says he took "the audio output of an amplifier and added a clamping diode and feed the signal into one of the phases on the worm drive motor. To give the motor a louder sound I added a small DC voltage to the other phase. This coil had the oppisite polarity then that of the audio phase."

Apparently, only the lightsaber sound was added to the montage later. [Star Wars Blog]

Jerry had an accident while biking, losing his finger. He got an artificial finger made of silicon, and instead of just giving it logical sexual uses, he decided to make it even more useful and embed a 2GB USB drive inside. The result is equally as gross as is fascinating. [Flickr via Bergie]

The company—which has been deleting messages from customers reporting on the problem left, right, and center—has offered a software fix, but it's saying that people are not entitled to any other kind of compensation or replacement. I smell class-action lawsuit. [The Inquirer via Electronista]

While this may be just a standard hardware switch and not a concerted effort to block piracy, some keen-eyed modders quickly noticed the change—in the latest drive revision, found in an Australian model with the serial number LAH1098xxxxx, the drive controller chip necessary for previous mods had been completely replaced by a new one.

What they have done is combine the old D1A and drive controller chip in to one which is now called the GC2-D3, as you can see from the photo there is a big blank space on the PCB where the controller chip used to be.

So far there haven't been any other reports of these Wiis showing up outside of Australia, so it may be a while before we see them widespread and by then, I'm guessing there will probably already be a workaround. Kiddies who just can't wait to open up their new Wiis and solder up a mod chip on Christmas morning, though, should probably double check which drive they have first. [mywii.com.au via GoNintendo]

At its core, the system is a dual-fan USB-powered laptop cooler with extra USB ports. Enter Brando, and this simple device gets injected with a rear-loaded 2.5" SATA hard drive dock to add extra storage. It's hard to believe that the average laptop USB port can power two fans, a SATA drive and three additional USB devices, but it looks like there's AC power to back up the system (the product description was a bit light on this point).

The USB Notebook Cooling Pad + 3-Port Hub + 2.5" HDD is available now for $33. Live it up. [Brando]

- Beer-filled USB flash drives
- Fetus USB flash drives
- Sawed-off USB flash drives
- Carabiner USB flash drives
- USB flash drives shaped like obsolete equipment
- Food-shaped USB flash drives
- Arty meta-storage USB flash drives [AP]

Yes, that would be a great reason to buy a Zune, but keep in mind that the question could refer to using the Zune simply as a means to upload pictures and audio tracks to the 360 (although that would be ridiculous because nobody would give a damn). And, of course, it may mean nothing at all. We shall have to wait and see if Microsoft does the smart thing here. [Zune Survey via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

Is capitalism really that great, if it leads to beer-filled USB flash drives with "optional customizable floating objects" inside? Should we Americans really be that pleased with our free speech, if it means I get emails from people who make flash drives with BEER in them? And am I really secure with myself as a gadget dork, getting all excited over the latest and greatest shiny toys, if that same email brags about the floating objects being in 3D? How could they be anything but 3D, when they're actual, physical objects? I can't pretend like the world is the same after this. The sun doesn't shine as bright. The air doesn't taste as sweet. Congratulations, Beer-Filled USB Drive Manufacturer. You've broken me. [CNK]

It's a bit like measuring the aerodynamic properties of a car that is standing still in a car park during a powerful storm. Our new wind tunnel, on the other hand, has been designed to exactly replicate the flow of air around and underneath the car when driving on a real road at speeds of up to 155kph. Our wind tunnel uses sophisticated techniques at the forefront of aerodynamic technology

This means that they have been able to reduce the air resistance in their new Volvo C30 DRIVe by 10%. That's 11.88 gallons of gas per 9,300 miles, an average driving year. Not too shabby. [Gizmag]

Buying continual replacements is quickly going to create a massively expenses bill, so we say, just stick with this alternative instead. Sure, it may not be miniature and cool, but at least it's big and ugly. If that isn't a selling point, having physical characteristics in common with your flash drive should have you sold. [Oh Gizmo!]

The WriteMaster SH-S223 will offer high-speed DVD burning on low speed media; 16X and 8X media will be written to at 22X and 12X write speeds, respectively. The SH-S223 will be able to write at the following maximum speeds; 22X DVD±R recording, 12X DVD-RAM recording, 16X DVD+R Dual Layer recording, 12X DVD-R Dual Layer recording, 8X DVD+RW recording and 6X DVD-RW recording. Time wise, 4.7GB of data can be burned to a DVD±R disc in approximately 4 minutes and 26 seconds. That kind of performance puts even Speedy Gonzalez to shame. All around, it looks like it has been a fantastic record-breaking weekend for our chums at Samsung. Well done, chaps. [Gizmag]

Mem|light is like a relationship between a man and a woman. In many ways both don't go together very well. Still, this medley of fire, emotion and rational logic results in an exciting combination.

Run out of fire, refill the lighter. Run out of ideas, refill the drive with fresh data. Makes sense to me. The Mem|lite's USB drive is quite small, storing itself away on the bottom of the lighter like a little car parking in a garage. Plus, you can customize these things with your own corporate logo, if your company is one of those "two worlds collide" type of organizations, or maybe a bunch of doper hackers. The 512MB model sells for $40. [Mem|lite, via Everything USB]

The design comes from Korean company Design Fingers but there's no word on availability. Popgadget helpfully point us to a similar product on Amazon though, if you really must get your hands on something like this. [Popgadget]

Plus, they added the expands-when-full feature found in the USB flashbag drive as well. Definitely cool, but we'd prefer a wallet version instead. – Jason Chen

Dima Komissarov [Shift via Shiny Shiny]

The drive comes with the Lexar dashboard software for both Mac and Vista (although the OS X version required a driver install and a reboot) that was easy to use and easy to create mounted encrypted partitions on the drive. After setting aside 500MB of our 1GB drive on the partition—which was then mounted as a separate disk—we could drag and drop files onto it and it would be completely unreadable (it just looked like a file) when the drive was on another machine unless you knew the password.

What's also convenient is the ability to encrypt and decrypt files that are not on the drive, meaning you can use the drive to encrypt half the files on your hard drive if you wanted. Except if you lost the drive, well, you'd probably have to go buy another one. All in all, their claims of this being the cheapest drive with the e-ink and 256-bit AES encryption makes this drive worthwhile in sizes from 512MBs up to 4GBs. An 8GB version should be available soon. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Lexar]

Head over to the forums to find out which drives and enclosures have been confirmed to work—which should be updated frequently—and various other gotchas you should look out for when doing your own upgrade. Brian will get right on it as soon as he's done cleaning the bodily fluids off. – Jason Chen

Series 3 Upgrade FAQ [TiVo Community]

It's of the same design as the flashbags, which get full when full. Neat, but ultimately unusable because your drive will spend most of its time somewhere inbetween, which takes up unnecessary space. – Jason Chen

Design Page [Plusminus via Dailygadget via Nerd Approved]

Unfortunately, I found write performance to be a lot lower than I'd have liked.

It read a fair 15MB per second on several machines, confirmed using both synthetic and MP3 file copies. But only wrote at 3MB per second.

For comparison, the laptop drive in the DV9000 HP Pavilion churned about 30MB per second in both reads and writes, and the Lexar Lightning, the fastest USB drive I had on hand, scored 17MB and 14MB per seconds in reads/writes.

In a nutshell, write speeds really need to be much better before I can recommend it.

–Brian Lam

Home Page [Lexar]

He sent along these two pictures (click on the gallery below for enlargements) showing the results of his hard drive upgrade, with a promise to tell us how he did it later on today. Watch this space. – Charlie White

Update: Here's the full step-by-step guide.

(Thanks, Jonathan!)

There's not that much of a price premium on all that tough stuff, either, where it runs about $280. Not bad looking to boot. – Charlie White

Buffalo HD-PL200U2/UC shock proof 200GB hard drive [Newlaunches]

How does this work? You screw your hard disk into the swings, mount it into an empty 5 1/4" bay, and fire up your PC. By cushioning the contact between your disk and your case, the X-Swing takes out (from xsreviews' test) all the noise generated by vibrations. You can still hear the disk spinning—it's not meant to stop that—but everything else is dead silent. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Noiseblocker via XSReviews]

•First of all, Mean Time Between Failure rates mean nothing.
•Secondly, SMART hardware monitoring missed 36% of all uh-ohs.
•Third, overworked drives fail similarly to standard drives after the first year.
•Fourth, Hard drive age means less than you think.
•Fifth, failure does not go up when temperatures are higher than usual (unless super high.)

Google even has insight on which brand that had the longest life.

But decided to leave it out because that data "wasn't useful in understanding the effects of disk age on failure rates."

That's the main jist of it. Some of this you probably knew, some of this may be myth-busting, but regardless, this is definitely important information that needed to get out to the general public. It's nice to see an impartial group that has the resources to perform a large-scale study like this shed light on this topic.–Alexander Yoon

Failure Trends Study(pdf) [via StorageMojo]

Since this is using SD cards—and four of them at that—there's no guarantee the performance will be anything above "meh". – Jason Chen

Product Page [GeekSTuff4u via Akihabara News via Crunchgear]