Design is the medium of change and reinvention, as with everything when a product is close to extinction – design is called in, mimicking design is the most convent and relevant way to reinvent the product and prolong the life of it…so I put the question to you, what will external hard drives look like before they disappear? Since the replacement technology–offsite storage–is invisible, what will they mimic?
In some cases they will mimic…nothing, or should we say – nothingness. For example LaCie’s line of Sam-Hecht and Neil-Poulton designed hard drives are super-minimal black, slick boxes with as much detail and design as a lamp post.
On the other hand Seagate, which announced its revamped-design of its FreeAgent line of external hard drives, now dubbed “GoFlex” is mimicking something else, jumping on the very chic and very ‘in’ design – Apple laptops and design related technology. The new line-up extends Seagate’s recently-introduced web services and sports an innovative approach to the problem of compatibility and cord complexity.
Instead of having separate ports for USB, eSata and FireWire, the new design allows the user to swap the entire “bridge board,” the hardware connection that sits between the hard drive storage media and its data transfer bridge. Whereas some external drives actually have to throttle their transfer speed to cope with the bottleneck of a USB 2.0 connection, Seagate’s decoupled approach means the device can take advantage of USB 3.0’s true speed.
While both companies’ have designs that seems to be trying to disappear, either vying for invisibility or seeking to blend into our already cluttered and stylish work tops like a chameleon, almost like they’re saying “if no-one can see us, maybe they won’t throw us away or swap us for the invisible offsite storage!”
Data media degrades over time and continual use, if you have an external data device that you are having difficulty reading or struggling to get your data back, get in touch with one of our data recovery specialists for a free no obligation quote and information. Let us offer you some additional information on offsite backup/storage and creating a disaster recovery plan.
