Beautiful Industrial Designed Portable External Hard Drive
Seagate Seven 500GB
Finally, a great looking, beautifully designed portable external hard drive. Seagate has introduced the world's thinnest USB powered portable external hard drive: the Seagate Seven. Although it only has a capacity of 500GB - (low by today's external HD standards) it is plenty enough to store your precious files on the go.
Best of all it's USB powered, so there's no need to carry around the large hassle-some AC adaptor brick and hunt for a power outlet. The US pricing for the hard drive is $99.00. I'd bet the Australian pricing of this will be bumped up by the usual ridiculous margin (closer to the $150 mark if I'd have to guess).
It seems the world of Industrial Designers have finally realised what an important staple the portable hard drive is. The external hard drive has long been a tech necessity and they are a dime a dozen on the market. Almost everyone owns at least one of these things, yet they all look as though the hard drive manufacturers have simply ripped the technology out of your standard PC and wrapped it in the cheapest (and usually tackiest) plastic shells they could find.
Good job Seagate.
Portable External Hard Drives
I feel that external hard drives (of the spinning plate variety), still have a long life ahead of them in terms of technological relevance and longevity. As a means of information storage, transfer and retrieval, they are a far too efficient and cheap means to be replaced by any other technology on the horizon.
Cloud storage relies too heavily on a stable and strong internet connection, and worst of all, exposes you to hackers from all over the world. Plus there is nothing like the tactile feeling of being able to hold and touch the files that are important to you.
Until SSD's (Solid State Drives) become a cheaper option, this is definitely the hard drive you'll want to carry with you everywhere you go. Let's just hope Seagate have finally solved all their reliability issues, as they are notorious for failing & defective products.