If you happen to have an old Mac keyboard or two sitting around the house, why not get crafty and USB-ify it? Stuffing USB flash drive internals into mundane objects is the latest rage. But you know what, I love it. Many years from now, geeks will compare their flash drive collection as a sort of “right of passage”. No joke, I want this.
If DIY isn’t your cup of tea, thesleekgeek (Etsy) will happily do the grunt work for you, $60 donation provided of course. So what do you say: DIY or pre-built?
As we sit here watching traditional HDD’s climb to 3TB and beyond, the homefront for SSD’s is a bit more…homely. While a few manufacturers have outed some pretty massive (by SSD standards) 512GB drives, they’re not exactly lightening quick nor cheap. But the technology is improving with each passing day and dropping in price.
PNY is looking to add some more fuel to the fire with some new offerings in their Optima SSD line. The new drives feature either 64GB or 128GB of MLC memory in svelte 2.5″ sizes. Further specs include USB 2.0, SATA 3.0 Gbps, a JMicron controller, 64MB buffer, and TRIM support.
At $192 (64GB) and $359 (128GB), they’re not exactly “cheap” for the amount of storage you’re receiving nor are they the fastest SSD’s we’ve seen. Speaking of speeds, PNY says the 64GB model will push 220/100MB read/write speeds while the more capacious 128gigger will sail a little faster at 235/150MB read/write.
For those teetering on the fence, do PNY’s new Optima drives strike the perfect balance between price and performance?
We get it. You’re a nerd, a geek, an outcast from the popular norm. It’s ok. It’s more fun in our circle anyway. Gadgets and gizmos are a great thing to be captivated by. The only thing that tops that perhaps is finding someone to share that fascination with for a lifetime to come. Yes, I’m talking about the “M” word — Marriage.
For Ray Arifianto, a software developer engineer at Microsoft Game Studios, his marriage was capped with the ultimate tribute to geekdome — the flashdrive-i-fication of his wedding ring. As you can see, he had a freakin’ USB drive engraved into the ring. Though the most clever part is the inscription that is located on the inside of the band: “For a lifetime of memories”. Quite ironic given the “memory” that’s forever engraved on the top of his ring.
Have 50GB+ of digital junk sitting around needing to be archived? Usually I’d say get a couple of external hard drives and be done with it. Cheap and easy. But I can see the need for high-capacity physical media as well. For the time being anyway, Blu-ray is pretty much your best bet at cramming the most 1′s and 0′s onto a portable and easily sharable disc. Putting said data on the disc is another thing entirely however.
Since Blu-ray burners and such are still rather expensive, the lower-end range of hardware is still rather slow. 1-2x is what you can expect in the cheap seats. And as you can imagine, 50GB at 1-2x will take a small eternity. But Buffalo has a solution in their new 12x USB 3.0 external Blu-ray burner — the MediaStation BR3D-12U3. While not exactly “cheap” at $349, the fact that it is 12x speed and USB 3.0 compatible in a time period where USB 3.0 accessories are still rather rare is a big plus. Adding to the pluses of this drive include 1080p upscaling, giving even “normal” video content an extra polish that will at least make it look a tad closer to true HD.
Look for the MediaStation BR3D-12U3 to hit store shelves later this month.
We’ve highlighted plenty of game cartridge/console mods in the past. I’m sure we’ve even done some similar to the Game Boy cartridge flash drive you see above. Though, if I can be brutally honest, I’ve got the memory of a gold fish. No joke. So if it’s managed to slip my memory, forgive me.
Either way, forgotten or not, the Game Boy Cartridge Flash Drive is right up there with the NES controller flash drive in terms of coolness. Although, the Teddy Bear Flash Drive is another runner up if we move past gaming peripherals altogether.
Meh, I’ll leave the deciding up to you. All you need now is the $30 price tag for the 4GB flash drive above and the link — Game Boy Cartridge Flash Drive | Etsy
Take any assortment of flash drives you see at your typical electronics store. Besides the storage capacity and drive design, there really isn’t anything all too different about them. Sure, some will perform better (read: faster) than others. But overall, a flash drive is a flash drive. It’s only when manufacturers get “creative” do we see anything and everything underneath the sun USB-ified. But every now and then, something truly unique comes along. The AirStash is one such drive, incorporating WiFi and media server capabilities within the device to expand functionality exponentially. What’s great with the WiFi support is that now you can transfer files to and from the device when it’s plugged into a computer (charges drive too!) as well as when it’s not. It’s like a portable network drive in your pocket.
At $99 it’s not the cheapest flash drive for the amount of storage you get — in this case, 0GB. No, that’s not a typo. There is absolutely 0GB of storage. Instead, the integrated microSD/SD card slot allows users to their own cards at will. To me, this is much more beneficial and nicer than typical integrated storage inside of a flash drive. Considering that SD cards currently go up to 32GB, the AirStash looks to be a pretty sweet little device. Now that is a flash drive worth dropping a few extra dollars on, no? Check it out in the vid below.
128GB flash drives — psh. They don’t have anything on the Moserbaer USB flash drive truck…yes, truck. Seems the clever marketing team behind Moserbaer truly know how to get some attention, for it was them who whipped up this little semi mod you see above. So a typical high capacity flash drive such as the Corsair GT 128 GB behemoth is “the king” if you will. Just imagine how many of those Corsair GT’s you could cram into the back of this semi. Ya, that’s a lot of storage.
According to the math of Jeff from CraziestGadgets, if you jammed a bunch of 1-inch cubed flash drives into the back, you’d wind up with 6,192,000 GB’s. But what if it were a bunch of those 128GB Corsair GT’s? The numbers are astronomical. Some fun brain food for a midnight snack. Eat up.
Why yes, it’s Sunday night and you’re dreading the work week that’s glaring at you ominously. While I can’t offer help to push off the work week, I can offer up a light hearted project to at least pass the time — he USB Ink Cartridge. Once again, Instructables has put together a a short and simple how-to on turning those old ink cartridges of yours into something a little more useful and lasting. Flash drives are becoming as common place as pens and pencils these days, so why not?
Thankfully, this is one of the lowest cost projects you can ever get in to. Almost everyone has a printer (or at least some old printer parts like cartridges) and at least one flash drive that they can sacrifice for the project. So cost withstanding, even time and tools are simple.
A nifty bonus is that paranoid data junkies can even modify the design to have the USB tip retract into the cartridge outright, thereby giving you the ability to remount it inside of a printer. The ultimate disguise. USB flash drive project party. This weekend. My house.
When even 11 isn’t far enough — Kingston has a beast of a flash drive with their latest DT310 usb device. Some geeks may be bragging of their new 128GB flash drive that they just picked up recently, boasting of their supreme nerdiness. At the top they are no more for Kingston has a new 256GB DT310 drive that now dwarfs the latest attempts of only a few other manufacturers. At 256GB, the drive is easily larger than a fair selection of lower end netbook and even many laptop hard drives. A big bragging point for sure. Then again, filling up 256GB worth of space over USB 2.0 isn’t exactly a pleasant experience. An $836.38 price as tested doesn’t exactly bode too well for curious (or hopeful) shoppers either.
Think we’ve reached a point at which the storage size has finally outpaced need?
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If you happen to have an old Mac keyboard or two sitting around the house, why not get crafty and USB-ify it? Stuffing USB flash drive internals into mundane objects is the latest rage. But you know what, I love it. Many years from now, geeks will compare their flash drive collection as a sort of “right of passage”. No joke, I want this. 
