We've learned by experience that not having any fans on external USB drives is a bad idea. These HDs get very hot. If they have no way of dissipating the heat they generate, they break. It's an easy problem to solve. You just have to use a fan. The trouble is that most fans can get pretty loud. It's just another noise that's added to the cacophony of gadgets that pollute our environment with sounds and drones. But what if there was a better way of cooling down hard drives that was silent?
It's a fact that USB hard drives are handy. Everyone should have a few. They are portable and easy to use, plug and play for the most part. They can be used while you are traveling or when you are at school. They can be used anywhere that isn't too wet. We've had a few HDs that didn't need to be plugged in. They were powered from the USB port. The trouble is that these drives aren't meant to be always on, which is what most users tend to do. This means that you need a fan. That creates noise. Hitachi's new brand SimpleTech has come up with an interesting green way of dissipating the heat generated from hard drives: they use bamboo.
This series of drives is called [re]Drive. Apparently the aluminum enclosure, that uses bamboo, acts like a heat sink, negating the need for a fan. This saves power and stops the noise. You'll still hear the HD turning, but that's it. Hitachi has a whole lot more to say about how renewable this technology and the packaging is. Suffice it to say that they mean that they grow their own bamboo, so they don't have to transport it and more. It's currently available on Amazon for $84 for the 500 GB size. [via Technabob]
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Um, why not make the whole thing from aluminum? Bamboo is not a good conductor, so it would actually insulate the drive, holding in the heat. If you made the case from aluminum, it should be much more efficient at dissipating the heat.
^ Eco-marketing (sometimes defies logic).
Aluminum/heatsink drive enclosures have been available for quite some time - slapping some bamboo on the side probably doesn't reduce the environmental impact or increase heat dissipation (exactly the opposite in the latter case, as noted above).
I'm all for buying a separate enclosure and choosing my own hard drive (advantages: OEM pricing, up to five year warranty depending on manufacturer, ability to choose low power consumption models). Of course, if the consumer really wants to be green, they can reuse the hard drive from an old computer system.
This one does look pretty though.