The Roland CD-2e personal SD/CD recorder would be useful for those who can not figure out the simple task of recording their voice or music onto CDs directly without needing to use a computer.

The CD-2e comes with a built-in mic. You can easily adjust pitch, key and tempo while you’re recording. It even has a metronome for improving timing and rhythm and stereo speakers. It can record directly to CD, but also provides an option to use SD if you want more capacity. For instance, using an 8 GB SDHC card will let you have up to 12 hours of recording time.

Buffalo has recently added the LinkStation Pro Duo as one of the latest to their lineup of NAS products, targeting small or home businesses in need of an affordable and stable solution for large capacity data storage.

The Pro Duo currently comes in a 1TB configuration with the option of either RAID 0 or RAID 1 redundant 3.5″ SATA drives. It connects to your network via 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet as an Active Directory client and also has Buffalo’s Web Access technology allowing you to access data stored on the drive remotely from anywhere via the web. It even has included software that lets you start it up remotely.

LaCie today announced at CES 2008, the new Little Big Disk Quadra, an ultra fast mobile disk designed for speed-intensive and capacity-demanding applications, like digital content creation, high-volume data exchange, and video editing, while on the move. The Little Big Disk is designed to run quietly and has superior heat dissipation with an integrated fanless cooling system. The aluminum heat-sink design also ensures superior reliability.

The Little Big Disk Quadra will be available in 400GB and 500GB versions with your choice of either 7200 or 5400 RPM drives, respectively. A quadruple interface allows universal connectivity for cross-platform compatibility.

According to a press release, BiTMICRO will be amazing some people for sure, with their new 2.5-inch solid-state drive with an amazing 832GB of NAND flash. The 3Gb SATA drive is a new addition to their E-Disk Altima line, and uses a technology they are calling multi-level cell (or MLC) memory, which doubles the number of bits stored per memory cell when compared with single-level cell (SLC) NAND. Apparently this increases data density and allows them to keep the price low.

Looks like they will be shipping in the 3rd quarter of 2008. That’s when we should see capacities ranging from 32GB all the way up to 832GB.

The CompactFlash Association will be unveiling a CFast connector package at CES 2008, and the SATA interface will give you data rates up to 3Gb per sec. That’s quite a jump over the current 133MB/second that PATA provides right now. As usual, there is no word yet as to when it will hit store shelves after CES 2008.

Mr. Shigeto Kanda of Canon and the CFA chairman of the board thinks that “The development of a CompactFlash card with a SATA interface will maintain the dominance of CompactFlash in the non-consumer (embedded systems, single board computers, data recorder, etc.) markets as well as promote its use in other applications such as digital SLR cameras and professional video cameras.”

Compact flash cards are slowly becoming a thing of the past, being replaced by SD cards, but there are still alot of cameras that rely on the older format. So RIDATA is looking out for you. They just introduced what they call the SMART compact flash card.

They are SMART because the have a new internal data monitoring system that ensures you never experience any data loss. It’s nice to have alot of storage in your camera, but not a pleasant feeling when you lose an important file. The cards also have embedded error correction code (ECC) which I believe is a fancy way of saying that it has “back up power Captain”, should something truly go wrong.

You, for some reason, need to copy files to upwards of 24 USB flash drives at the same time. You could do it one at a time, but that would be like pulling your teeth out with a wrench. Kanguru has unveiled a new copying device which will let you do that mass USB flash drive transfer - the Kanguru USB Duplicator.

The Kanguru USB Duplicator lets you mass copy files to either nine USB flash drives or 24, depending upon the configuration. It supports USB 2.0 and has eight main function modes for copying and verifying data. It can also work with USB hard drives.

Maybe you’ve got a thing for Hannah Montana websites. Or maybe you’re just super paranoid. To protect your data, you could take apart the hard drive and have some pretty cool parts to remember it by. A better answer is the eRazer. It could be your new best friend.

It’s a stand alone device that doesn’t require a functioning computer to use it. It can erase all the files on a drive by writing a data pattern over the entire disk. They claim it will clean a 250GB drive in just short of two hours. The price is $100. If you are still paranoid that someone will discover your dirty secrets, you can spend an extra $50 to get one that makes multiple passes on the disk and writes random characters over all of it.

LaCie has put out its share of interesting looking external drives like the Sam Hecht designers and of course that golden number, and they’ve now added to the lineup with this minimalist design from Neil Poulton.

The LaCie Hard Disk, named as simple as it looks, consists of an unobtrusive smooth black box with few distinguishing marks other than the cool blue LED strip (everyone likes cool blue LED strips) on the underbelly and the LaCie brand name on the side. The company says it even runs quietly and cool since it has no fan and uses a “smart” heat dissipation design.

With the Transcend StoreJet OTG and it’s OLED display, you can manage what you’ve got on it, and even interface with computer peripherals with…no computer. Transfer data to and from flash drives, digital cameras or MP3 players without having to boot up the PC. Just hook it up to StoreJet and you’re good to go. The device is just 1.8 inches thick, so it’s ultra portable.

This is a real time-saver. It will save energy too, by not having to boot up everytime you need to move data. Basically, it bridges the gap between your PC and your mobile devices. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see more products like it. It holds 30 GB and will cost you $200.

You might remember the floppy disk. Your trash bin or closet certainly hasn’t forgotten. In the good old days, you used to get them in the mail in such numbers that they were used as coasters. Their enemies were heat,magnets and pressure. Well, these are not your usual floppy disks.

Inside their casing, they hide a 200 MB CDR. Stick them in your floppy drive and nothing at all will happen. But stick them in your CDR drive and the square disks will spin away. If you have missed writing on their labels, each has a different colored label, so you can write what’s on them just like the old days.

The new PocketRAID from Norazza isn’t something you spray in your pocket to kill bugs. It is rather what the company describes as the world’s smallest external RAID 1 system. It starts at around $440 for 160GB of storage, going up from there to a maximum size of 320GB.

The Norazza PocketRAID weights around 1.9 pounds and measures a small 5″ x 3″ x 1.5″. It’s configured for RAID 1 style storage, sporting two compact hard drives in its body. It’s capable of supporting both eSATA and USB data transfer and has a built-in backup button as well as LED status indicator lights.

Data storage news just keeps moving forward. Sony has announced that it will release a multi-layer optical disk that can store over 500GB data.

They are working on it now and the holographic recording technology will have seven layers, producing standard-sized disks with the ability to store 500GB of data of any kind, from HD Video to computer data. They expect the holographic disk to be available sometime in the next 3 years. They are using their “Micro-Reflector” method in order to write to seven layers per disk. Memory density per layer is 1.2 GB and the maximum error rate is 4.1 × 10-4.

Sometimes the most ingenious solutions are the simplest. Anyone who has a junk drawer can immediately appreciate the Battery Caddy in all it’s simplistic glory. My own junk drawer is practically overflowing with batteries of various sizes. Well, now I have an easy way to organize them before they lose their juice and are disposed of.

These were originally designed for Pilots to carry batteries in their flight bag in a convenient manner. The caddies have flexible teeth so the battery won’t fall out, even if it is tossed around a bit and they even protect the terminals on each end of the batteries.

There are always going to be some of us who haven’t quite made the leap toward the current media standard. I am sure that one or two of you reading this may have even actually played a vinyl record in your lifetime. Luckily for these people, technology seems to have a “No one left behind, even your grandpa” rule, as there always seems to be a new product to bridge the gap.

Take this CD album, for instance. If you haven’t quite made the jump to digital music and still have a CD player in your car, it will help you keep your eyes on the road. Each album holds 20 CDs. Just record a 3 second voice message for every CD. Then as you are flipping through the album, just listen to the messages telling you which albums they are.