The Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000, is a 3.5-inch drive that fits inside any compatible computer or enclosure. As expected, the drive uses the SATA interface and is Energy Star-rated. Hitachi didn’t reveal pricing, but said they were shipping the drive immediately. So be on the lookout. [Dvice]

Accepting 2.5 and 3.5-inch SATA drives through a cartridge-like loading system, the $US200 player streams 1080P content (H.264, MPEG1/2/4, DIVX, XVID, TS, MKV, RM/RMVB, TP, AVI, M2TS, VOB, DAT, MPG, MPEG and MOV) through HDMI and component outputs. If hard drives and movies aren’t enough, it also reads SD, SDHC, MMC and MS cards and supports e-books and music.

So what’s up next for Brando’s infamous hard drive dock? Let’s just say that if there’s no laser or disco ball involvement we’ll be vastly disappointed. [Brando]

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 $US249.99 USD and for the 750 GB version it is $US189.99 USD. WD Scorpio Blue hard drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty. More information about WD Scorpio Blue mobile hard drives may be found on the company’s Web site at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=685.

However, the XF1 looks geared towards the mainstream consumer crowd, as it only plays back video at 1080i, and fails to support the h.264 or MKV standards. It does, however, support the AVI, Xvid and MPEG family of codecs, along with all the major audio ones. Price and availability are yet to be announced. [LG via Everything USB]

Adding to the composite, component, and USB, the SATA HDD Multimedia Dock II also has an HDMI port, although it only supports 1080i. The media player supports the following formats:

• MPEG-1 (MPG, DAT)
• MPEG-2 (MPG, MPEG, VOB)
• MPEG-4 (AVI, MP4)
• DivX 3.11/4/5 (AVI, DIVX)
• XviD (AVI)
• AVI decode audio: MP3, AC3, ADPCM
• VOBSUB: srt, sub, smi, txt, arse, ssa
• MPEG-1 Layer 3, 24-320kbps (MP3)
• AC3 (in the movie)
• Microsoft PCM Wave (WAV)
• Advance Audio Coding LC (AAC)
• Microsoft Windows Media Audio WMA7/8 (WMA), no support for WMA9 Pro
• MP2 (MPA)

Looks like crap, but nice for $US79. [Brando]

Yup, that glowing mess was once a hard drive.

Thermite’s a blend of iron oxide and aluminium, and when it goes off it’s pretty crazy, reaching iron-melting temperatures in seconds, and spitting gobbets of metal everywhere. So don’t try this at home. Really. ‘Cause it might not stop reacting at the bottom of your PC case, and molten metal dropping through your floor is just bloody dangerous. [Hackaday]

Iomega Announces Must-Have for MacBook Air Owners:
New Ultra-Thin eGo Helium Portable Hard Drive
***
eGo Helium Delivers 320 Gigabytes of Stylish Storage for MacBook Air

SAN DIEGO, September 17, 2008 – Iomega, an EMC company (NYSE: EMC) and a global leader in data protection and security, today announced the exciting new Iomega® eGo™ Helium Portable Hard Drive USB 2.0 320GB*, a perfect match for the style and incremental storage needs of Apple’s revolutionary MacBook Air™ notebook.

On display this week at the Apple Expo tradeshow in Paris, the new eGo Helium portable drive brings the MacBook Air™ notebook’s aesthetic to Iomega’s wildly popular eGo portable hard drive. In addition to the drive’s portable storage, the eGo Helium also harnesses the benefits of cloud computing with Mozy™ online backup service, giving users incredible value and security for securely storing, protecting and accessing important files.

Cool Hardware
The tapered 320GB eGo Helium portable hard drive echoes the stylish lines of the streamlined MacBook Air™ laptop, enclosing a state-of-the-art 2.5-inch portable hard drive in an anodized aluminium shell to create a package that is a mere 0.63 inches thick (16 mm) and weighs only 7 ounces (200 grams). Formatted with Apple’s HFS+ file system, the 320GB hard drive sports Iomega’s Drop Guard™ design feature that protects the drive from drops of up to 51 inches (1.3 meters) onto industrial carpeting–40 percent above the industry average for portable hard drives. The eGo Helium receives power from the USB port so there’s no power supply to carry around. And with space for up to 1,280,000 photos, over 5,920 hours of music or 480 hours of video**, the 320GB eGo Helium drive gives new meaning to stylish portable storage.

“Iomega’s eGo portable hard drives have garnered tremendous attention in the beige world of external storage by offering consumers a choice of several different vibrant colours as well as a camouflage print and genuine leather,” said Peter Wharton, vice president of marketing, Iomega Corporation. “The eGo Helium extends that strong commitment to delivering style with substance. What makes eGo Helium such an effective piece of industrial design is the way it dresses up a highly functional 320GB hard drive device into a durable and sleek package with plenty of storage capability, making it an easy-to-use ‘eye-catcher’ that’s small enough to go anywhere.”

Key Software
Iomega offers two Mac OS® X backup software applications with the eGo Helium portable hard drive as free downloads for added data safety: EMC® Retrospect® Express for Macintosh 6.1 software, and MozyHome™ online backup software (2GB free; unlimited online storage for $4.95/month). Retrospect Express protects a single Macintosh desktop or notebook computer by backing up to internal and external hard drives, NAS devices, CD/DVDs and removable drives such as Iomega’s REV Backup Drive. MozyHome online backup service provides online storage for backing up selected folders or files to world-class EMC data centers.

Computer users running the Windows XP or Vista operating systems can reformat the eGo Helium drive to NTFS for use with Windows only, or the drive can be formatted as Fat 32 for use with both Macs and Windows PCs. Customers running Windows XP or Vista can also download Retrospect Express HD 2.5 for Windows with MozyHome integration, which gives users the convenience of shared setup information and the ability to send backups to either nearline storage (an external hard drive or network drive), online storage (the Internet), or both.

Compatibility
The Iomega® eGo™ Helium™ Portable Hard Drive USB 2.0 320GB is compatible with Mac OS X 10.1.5 or above and with Microsoft® Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP, and Windows Vista™. MozyHome software is available for Mac OS X 10.4 and above, along with Windows XP and Windows Vista. EMC Retrospect software is available for both Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

Price and Availability
The Iomega® eGo™ Helium Portable Hard Drive USB 2.0 320GB will be available worldwide in October for $149.99 from online retailers, VARs, resellers and select retailers, as well as at www.iomega.com. (All pricing in this news release is U.S. suggested retail.)

About EMC
EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world’s leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC’s products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

About Mozy
Mozy is the leader in online data backup for consumers and businesses. With more than 850,000 users and 23,000 business customers, Mozy offers a simple, automatic and secure service for backing up data over the Internet. Mozy was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2007 and operates as part of the EMC Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division. Information can be found at www.mozy.com.

About Iomega
Iomega Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC Corporation and headquartered in San Diego, is a worldwide leader in innovative storage and network security solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, consumers and others. The Company has sold more than 400 million digital storage drives and disks since its inception in 1980. Today, Iomega’s product portfolio includes industry leading network storage products, external hard drives, and our award-winning removable storage technology, the REV® Backup Drive. To learn about all of Iomega’s digital storage products and managed services solutions, please go to the Web at www.iomega.com. Resellers can visit Iomega at www.iomega.com/ipartner.

if this trend continues, and the cost of storage continues to decrease, we estimate that somewhere around 2020, all the world’s content will fit inside an iPod, and all the world’s music would sit in your palm as early as 2015…rendering the CD format unnecessary.

She also tossed out some numbers on daily content creation that are pretty interesting.

We estimate that everyday somewhere around 65,000 new videos are added to YouTube, 100,000 blogs it’s just staggering if you look at the rate at which content is being produced.

Wow, that’s a lot of pig punch videos. [macworld]