Hey look, a shiny black box. Not just any box though, that's the 160GB BlackArmor portable hard drive with built-in AES encryption. Sorry, no way we could think of to photograph all that security, but we've got a few more glowing shots of overlapping rectangles in the gallery for you geometry types. If nothing else, at least you get a feel for the size of the little guy.

When most people express concern and worry about data loss, it's usually due to the more common cases: drive failure, accidental deletion, power surges from lightning storms, etc. Not so often do drive companies cater to those with paranoia of fire / flood / acts of God, etc. crowd, but for that crowd SentrySafe and Maxtor have teamed up on the FIRE-SAFE/Waterproof safe and drive. The drive is essentially a OneTouch 4 Mini decked with backup, restore, and recovery software (like Maxtor SafetyDrill) and a tank-like shell that's rated for 30 minutes of fire protection up to 1,500°F; the safe is merely, well, a safe with a driveless USB passthrough and fire protection up to two hours at 1,800°F. You'll have to plunk down a fairly crazy $320 for the 160GB and $260 for the 80GB drives though, and $420 for the safe, so be forewarned: this is only useful data protection if you're fearful of what happens when bits meet the elements. The drives are single disk enclosures -- not RAID -- and thus have no redundancy themselves should an old fashioned drive crash occur.

How convenient -- your shiny new Maxtor Basics Personal Storage 3200 may have come preloaded with a nasty virus right out of the box. That's right folks, you may not even need to open any suspicious emails or surf over to dodgy websites, as an undisclosed amount of drives produced by a company sub-contract manufacturer located in China were reportedly sent out with the Virus.Win32.AutoRun.ah program already loaded. Apparently, the molar virus is one that get its kicks by searching for passwords to online games (World of Warcraft included) and sending them back to a "server located in China," and as if that wasn't enough, it can also disable virus detection software and delete other molar viruses without breaking a sweat. In order to determine whether your drive is one of the lucky (or unlucky) ones, feel free to phone up Seagate with the serial number in hand, and if you haven't already updated your anti-virus software, now would probably be a splendid time to do so.

[Thanks, overseatrader]

Seagate has updated its line of Maxtor OneTouch external drives, making the new set the fourth iteration of its cheapo hard drive solution. The new models heading out are the OneTouch 4, OneTouch 4 Plus, and OneTouch Mini, all wrapped in black plastic and metal (which Seagate likes to refer to as "vault-like"). The OneTouch 4 can rock your storage world in 250GB, 500GB , or 750GB varieties, ranging in price from $99.99 to $269.99, the OneTouch 4 Plus is available in 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, or 1TB, from $129.99 to $359.99, and the OneTouch Mini comes 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB, running you an affordable $99.99 to $149.99. All of the drives offer the famous OneTouch backup, which should give you at least a sliver of peace of mind. The whole line is available right this second, so get the credit card out.

[Via Crave]

It looks like Western Digital isn't the only hard drive firm broadening the horizons of its oh-so-popular external lineup, as Maxtor has announced today a trio of revamped devices sporting the same technologies (and less-than-sexy enclosures) we've come to expect, but also gain welcome upgrades in the file space department. The company's flagship unit, the OneTouch III Turbo Edition, now tips the scales at 1.5TB, and still touts the same "user-configurable RAID," automatic backup scheduling, "System Rollback," USB 2.0 connectivity, and DriveLock software to protect your precious information (or priceless game saves) from the grimey hands of data thieves; meanwhile, the non-Turbo edition now comes in a 750GB single-drive flavor, while the Mini tops out at 160GB. Rather than cramming more space into its Shared Storage II drives, Maxtor now offers single-drive versions in 320GB and half-terabyte sizes, and includes software to facilitate "easy backup scheduling between networked computers," detailed storage status to all connected users, and a pair of USB 2.0 ports. If you're just too occupied to schedule your own backups, or just need a less expensive alternative to an in-home NAS, Maxtor's refreshed offerings will have you covered later this month.

[Via eHomeUpgrade]

Remember Project Fusion? Well that effort to consolidate, then turn your media loose on the web via Fabrik's software and Maxtor's disks is now product. Seagate's Maxtor Fusion personal media hub holds up to 500GBs of your digital content which can be shared both privately and publicly via a web browser. Fabrik's so-called "webtop" interface makes use of AJAX and tags to provide the responsiveness and drag-n-drop flexibility generally associated with desktop apps and supports browser plug-ins for both Windows Media Player and QuickTime for seamless access to slideshows, videos, and music independent of platform. Kind of like your own You Tube and Flickr service in a box, eh? The Maxtor Fusion features a 7200RPM 500GB disk, Gigabit Ethernet, and 2 x USB 2.0 ports. Available now for $799 exclusively from J&R Music in NYC with more retailers on deck for the summer.

Reg Hardware seems to agree with our own astute pundit Ross Rubin that Maxtor's Shared Storage Plus Network Attached Storage device is a winner as a solid backup solution while doing double-duty as a capacious media server. Testing the 500GB version of the SSP, El Reg found the device easy to setup and share among several users, with software that provides a simple way to set up incremental backups, network printing, or media streaming to compatible uPnP devices. There do seem to be a few downsides here, most notably the irritating fan whine and skimpy one year warranty, and less importantly, the fact that it tags the icons of folders selected for backup with a little tick mark. If tick marks and fan noise don't bother you, though, the $465-as-tested SSP sounds like a pretty good way to backup data for small offices and homes with multiple computers, while giving you a little extra functionality to boot

We're still trying to cut through the jargon in Maxtor's latest press release (which may be the first we've seen that actually manages to fit "Web 2.0" and "tipping point" into a single sentence), but once you manage to pare it down, it turns out the company is announcing one new product, teasing about another, and providing some more info about a deal we checked out earlier. The new product is the Maxtor Shared Storage II, a NAS for home and office users, offering RAID storage, gigabit Ethernet and up to 1TB of space. The teased product is the One Touch III Mini Edition (pictured), a one-inch thick drive that can hold up to 100GB of data and which will, according to Maxtor, include "an industry first." Details, including that "first," will be available later this month. Oh, and the deal? As we previously noted, Maxtor's working with Fabrik on something called "Project Fusion," which sounds like an online backup service that will take advantage of Maxtor's One Touch interface to make it easier to store and share files on a hosted server. Pricing is expected to range from a free service to one costing about $50 a year, depending on storage and feature needs. We're looking forward to it; we need something that will, in Maxtor's words, help us "truly harness [our] content."

So Maxtor and Valley startup Fabrik are up to something together, which they're calling Project Fusion. It sounds very cloak and dagger and whatnot, but it's actually pretty transparent and literal: they're building a personal server (i.e. a big external hard drive) that connects up to the Internet with Fabrik's service and allows you to access your data with a web-accessible frontend. There's even a new buzzword to describe the package: "personal media portal." Ok then. According to Maxtor the device could go for as much as $799 for a 500GB, which leaves a bit of a bad taste in our mouths (especially when there's, you know, about ten thousand companies out there trying to get your files online for you), but Om likes Fabrik, and you can't really argue with Om.