The 1TB Origin Storage portable hard drive comes with built in hardware encryption to protect your valuable and highly secret data. The device is available in two versions. The Pro version features 128bit AES hardware encryption, while the Enterprise version features 256bit hardware encryption.

Both models boast an LCD screen that can be used to enter an 18 digit PIN number in order to access the drive. These hard drives can also detect brute force and malware attacks and can be set to self destruct and clean all of the data from the device should you need it.

So where’s all that USB 3.0 gear at? Well, at least Buffalo has something to offer. The HD-HU3 series of USB 3.0 hard disks will be the “world’s first” to ship. Buffalo will make NEC’s roughly $60 IFC-PCIE2U3 2-port PCI Expressx1 host controller available with its hard drives when they ship this month in Japan.

The 1TB and 1.5TB drives will cost about $225 and about $284. A 2TB disk is on the way later for about $523. Awesome. Now you have something to use those 3.0 cables with.

ioSafe, a technology producer of disaster proof storage hardware, launched the ioSafe Solo in January and this week we took the opportunity to test one out to see how well it would hold up. The ioSafe Solo is a rugged external drive designed to keep your stuff safe in the event of a disaster such as a fire, flood or the building literally falling around it.

The ioSafe is not shockproof however and is not designed to be dropped from great distances or thrown around. It is however built to withstand intense heat (up to 1550 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes), complete submersion (up to 10 feet for 3 days!) and is encased in a rugged enclosure making it like the Sherman tank of external drives.

Today Seagate updated its Barracuda line with an industry first. The 2TB Barracuda XT drive uses a 6Gbps SATA interface and has twice as much theoretical bandwidth as existing SATA II drives. It gives the disk up to 600MBps in burst transfers. When it comes to actual speed, the drive is still pretty fast with a 140MBps sustained transfer rate and Seagate’s 64MB of onboard cache.

The Barracuda XT will support SATA II and 1.5Gbps SATA systems and should still reach its sustained speed on those models.

Mmmm chocolate. Whether you like a silky smooth chocolate bar mouse or a creamy chocolate DS case, nothing says sugar addiction like a chocolate case for your gadgets.

Here’s one for your SATA Hard drives. These silicon cases will hold your 2.5″ SATA hard drives and protect them from scratches and shocks. They come in Chocolate Brown, White Chocolate or Strawberry flavors. Each has a standard USB connector that lets you connect to a PC or Mac for delicious data transfer.

Looks like LG is jumping on the portable hard drive bandwagon with their new line of XD3 Slims. These trim hard drives measure just 13mm thin and sport rubber-padded sides for impact protection. They connect by your USB 2.0 port, but the XD3 Slim can also connect using SATA II.

Storage capacity maxes out at 500GB. The 320GB model should arrive in Europe and North America for about $90 later this year. They look pretty good. We really like the brushed aluminum finish.

Apricorn has introduced its Aegis Padlock Secure Hard Drive that sports a keypad so that users can enter PIN numbers to access the data inside. So if you lose the drive, it can’t be accessed without the PIN number. This drive also features AES-128 or 256 bit encryption to keep things safe when connected to your machine through a USB 2.0 cable and it’s cross-platform compatible.

Another interesting aspect is an administrator feature that allows you to set up to ten user IDs and one administrator, so that others can have direct access to the information. Some other features include a 16-point omnidirectional shock mounting system and it will come in 250GB, 320GB and 500GB storage capacities.

When it comes to life on the road with a notebook one day, you will probably drop your precious computer. If you travel a lot it may be that someone else drops your computer for you. Either way, many notebook users find that their machines end up hitting the ground and the most likely part to die from the impact is often the hard drive.

Samsung has announced a new hard drive series called the Spinpoint M7. The drive is available in 250, 320, 400, and 500GB capacities. All of the models use a new controller that promises power savings of up to 25% compared to conventional 2.5-inch drives.

Saving a few watts by using a more energy efficient hard drive isn’t high on the list of priorities for most businesses and your average computer user. The savings in electricity for most of us won’t offset the cost of replacing a hard drive. However, for large data centers saving a few watts per hard drive can equate to millions of dollars.

Hitachi has announced its latest energy efficient hard drive aimed at the enterprise market called the Ultrastar C10K300. The drive spins at 10,000 RPM and connects to servers via an SAS interface. The drive has a 2.5-inch form factor helping to save space in crowded server environments.

If you are in the market for a compact, portable hard drive that can store lots of data, check out the new line of Aegis Mini hard drives from Apricorn. The Apricorn Aegis Mini comes in several sizes, the largest being 240GB, there are also 80GB and 120GB capacities available.

These tiny hard drives measure just 17mm x 68.5mm x 86mm and weigh just 3.7oz, and you can choose either a USB or firewire version. To put its size into perspective, these high capacity hard drives are smaller then a standard deck of cards. Prices start at $149 for the 80GB version, while the 240GB version will cost you $269.

There are many uses today for hard drives optimized for storing and streaming video files. Uses for this type of drive include DVRs, video work stations, and video surveillance applications. Hitachi has announced its latest video centric drive that is added to its CinemaStar line.

The new drive is called the CinemaStar C5K500 and is a 2.5-inch drive offering a maximum capacity of 500GB. The small drive is designed for silent operation, cool running, and low power usage. The rotational speed of the drive is 5400 rpm and is uses Hitachi SmoothStream technology to enhance digital video streaming applications.

Western Digital has finally launched the industry’s first 2TB internal hard drive today in the US. It’s the highest capacity single HDD in the known universe, dubbed the 2TB Caviar Green. It’s available now for $299. The 3.5-inch platform drive includes 32MB of cache and is based on WD’s 500GB per platter technology with 400Gb/in2 areal density.

HotHardware had a sneak peek at the drive and has some benchmark results: The WD managed to hold its own against the Spinpoint F1 and Barracuda 7200.11.

The ioSafe Solo External Hard Drive is great for those who need to protect their data from every eventuality. It will survive a fire for 30 minutes as well as being submerged in ten feet of water for 10 minutes. I’m not sure that will do you much good in your everyday life, but if the inhabitants of Atlantis had had these, their secrets would have survived. Maybe. So let that be a lesson to you.

For $199 you can get a 500GB model, but, since this thing is pretty bomb-proof, you’ll have a hard time upgrading the drive in there so you may want to go straight for the $349 1.5TB model. Early adopters will get $50 off.

If you’re a DJ or a wannabe DJ, you’ll want a turntable that sets you apart from the rest. You could spend some real money to get yourself a decent set-up or you can make your own if you have an old hard drive laying around. That’s what a group of students at universities in the UK, Austria, and New Zealand did.

They all worked together to come up with a digital DJ interface, and the HDD-turntable you see above sits at the center. The students fell in love with the weight of the disk and the quality of its bearings. All you need are “a few op amps, resistors and a programmable microcontroller of some kind” and you can be mixing like they do. Hit the link for instructions.

Storage capacities are growing for both desktop and portable computers. Notebooks still can’t match the storage capacity available in many desktop computers, but the gap is closing. Hitachi announced its latest notebook HDD today that offers lots of storage and green features built-in.

The hard drive is called the Travelstar 5K500.B and has 500GB of storage space wile consuming only 1.4W during read/write operations. The drives are also halogen free making them more environmentally friendly.