For a long time the only option for storing data inside computer was a traditional HDD with spinning palters. SSDs came along and used flash storage that needed no spinning platters and offered more speed. People are now starting to move to SSDs rather than HDDs in force with the price of SSD storage becoming down.

Addonics has announced a couple new ways to get solid-state storage in your notebook or desktop computer with two new CFast adapters. The first adapter is the CFast HDD adapter that lets users put either 8GB CFast or 32GB CFast cards inside the machine. The HDD adapter is a direct replacement for a 2.5-inch drive in a desktop or notebook computer.

I guess with all things being equal I and many others would prefer to have a gadget that looked cool over one with a more mundane design. This is the crowd that will like the sound of the new Team TP1023 external HDD.

The drive is designed to look like a sports car, and it does a good job. It reminds me of a Ferrari. The drive has a suspension system to protect the HDD in the event of a drop. Other feature of the external HDD include an energy saving automatic suspend mode when the drive is idle to save power.

I can remember not that many years ago when a SDHC card was only a few megabytes and that was a lot of space. Today SDHC cards can store many, many times that amount of data. The new SDXC format promises even more storage in the same size constraints.

Team has announced that it will be launching a new SDXC card at Computex that has 64GB of storage space. The new card supports the SD3.0 interface and is backwards compatible with SD2.0.

OCZ unveiled its new line of Vertex 2 and Agility 2 SSDs a while back. There was also a limited edition of the Vertex SSD with better performance.

OCZ has now announced that it is adding a couple higher capacity versions to the Vertex 2 and Agility 2 lines. The two lines will not come in versions that have 400Gb or 480Gb of storage.

The Stealth HD Bio from MXI Security is a biometric USB hard drive with AES 256-bit CBC hardware encryption that is perfect for your secure portable data security needs. The device is powered by the Bluefly Security Processor which is FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validated.

The Stealth HD Bio is available in 250GB, 320GB and 500GB capacities. It’s more secure than some due to a fingerprint scanner that complements the security processor on the drive. Sadly we don’t have any info on pricing or availability yet.

My son has been asking me to take him to see Ironman 2 since the first preview ran on TV. We went to see the flick last Friday when it opened and we were both pretty bored after only a bit of the movie had aired. It is far from as good as the first flick in the franchise.

I can only hope that the Ironman flash drive from Tyme Machines is more fun than the movie turned out to be. The company also makes flash drives that are sculpted to look like Star Wars characters.

Check out this awesome Homemade 16TB NAS. In fact, this one looks much better than some of the current NAS drives available on the market. This homemade NAS drive features 16TB of RAID 5 storage and a 1.66GHz Intel Atom processor, in a hand built steel and aluminum enclosure.

If you are itching to try your hand at something like this, then head on over to Will U. Design for full details on how this awesome 16TB NAS Drive was made. It’s a thing of beauty.

Many of the new high-end motherboards are now coming with USB 3.0 port son them so the USB 3.0 gear on the market is becoming more usable. OCZ has announced a new USB 3.0 SSD called the Enyo.

Just look at all of those mouth watering colors. Verbatim‘s new Store ‘n’ Go external hard drive is based on a 2.5″ form factor and will hold up to 1TB of data. That rainbow of colors seems to match the season as well. They come in red, blue, green, white, black, silver, purple and orange.

It connects via USB and sports a Green button to send it into an energy-saving sleep mode if you care about the environment. Each drive comes with Nero Rescue and Nero BackItUp Essentials and Burn software. Your choice of 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 640GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities for $80, $94, $107, $121, $134 and $256.

When it comes to keeping data on a flash drive that is small and easily lost your best bet is to encrypt the data. This is particularly important if the data is sensitive or personal. Patriot has a new flash drive called the Bolt that will protect whatever data you want to put on the thing.

The bolt is in a rugged aluminum enclosure and comes in capacities from 4GB to 64GB. The drive has read speed of 30MB/s and a write speed of 12MB/sec. The data is protected with 256-bit AES encryption.

The Silicon Power A70 Armor USB 2.0 external hard drive will hold your data in the usual way, but it’s also waterproof, impactproof, dustproof and vibration-resistant. This version is aimed at those who work in difficult or extreme conditions.

In extreme conditions you want to make sure that your data is safe and secure. This model comes in several capacities from 250GB to 640GB and is compatible with Windows, OS X and Linux operating systems.

When it comes to flash drives, most of them all use the USB port. Some larger external HDDs available use eSATA, but that connectivity option is not common on flash drives. The OCZ Throttle does offer eSATA and is virtually identical to this new Active Media Products drive.

The drive has 16GB or 32GB capacities available with prices of $69.95 and $109.95 respectively. The drives both have an eSATA connector on one end and a mini USB port on the other.

Plextor has been in the optical drive market for years now. The company is branching out and has announced a pair of new SSDs that are available. The SSDs are the 64GB PX-64M1S and the 128GB PX-128M1S.

Both of the drives use non-volatile NAND flash memory and Marvell controller chipsets. The drives are both 2.5″ form factor units and use the SATA II interface. Plextor ships the SSDs with Acronis True Image software for backup and recovery.

CeBIT is a show that is much more focused on computer hardware and other items than CES is. CeBIT kicked off today in Germany and among the new PC hardware being shown off is the Team Xtreem-S1 SSD.

The SSD uses a Sandforce processor for performance and promises up to 270MB/s read speed and write speed of 260MB/s. The SSD uses the SATA II 3Gb/sec interface and supports Windows 7 Trim function.

When you’re on vacation, you don’t want to carry all kinds of extra external drives just so you can dump your photos. Well, Sanho’s HyperDrive Album will help in that regard. Problem is it’s way overpriced at $600.

The HyperDrive Album helps you clear out your memory cards and back up your photos without a computer. It has a 640GB capacity, 2GB per minute transfer speed, and a 4.8-inch display for viewing. It would come in very handy while traveling, but that price is a deal-breaker.