We see so many flash drives around these parts, it is truly, truly hard for any to distinguish themselves in our eyes. These ones? Well, we'll admit it: we have a giant soft spot for their massive noggins. Not the first Star Wars flash drives we've seen -- this newest set store up to 2GB per drive -- which isn't anything to throw a party over, but they're really cute, right? The set, which includes Darth Vader, Yoda (look at his toes!), a Stormtrooper and Boba Fett, will be available starting in October for $25 each.

[Via Technabob]

Looks like the storage freaks at Seagate are back on the scene with yet another array of BlackArmor devices for securing all that precious data of yours. First up: for the small business types, the NAS 220 storage server sports 4TB of shared storage capacity for up to 20 PCs. If that's not your cup of tea, the WS 110 is an external (USB 2.0 or eSATA) drive available in capacities up to 2TB. Lastly (but not leastly) the PS 110 is a 500GB portable drive perfect for road warriors and the like, sporting a thin form factor (12.5mm). All devices include automated full-system backup, SafetyDrill+, and AES 256-bit government-grade encryption. Both the BlackArmor WS 110 ($159.99 for 1TB or $309.99 for 2TB) and the BlackArmor PS 110 ($159.99 for 500GB) are available now. The BlackArmor NAS 220 will hit the shelves in late July ($449.99 for 2TB or $699.99 for 4TB). Full PR after the break.

What a difference six months makes. Back before Christmas, one of the VPs at Western Digital was saying that the company only "enters markets that exist," meaning, of course, that we had to take all the tales of SSDs that we heard (in product spec sheets and reviews) on faith alone. Since then the company's acquired SiliconSystems and -- a short trip down the road to Damascus later -- it's announcing the SiliconDrive III product range. SiliconSystems' meat and potatoes were heavy hitters in such industries as communications, aerospace, and military, and it seems that WD's new range will continue to target these markets. According to The Register, the range sports SiSMART (which keeps tabs on the drive's status in real-time, notifying the user when it needs to be replaced) and includes 2.5-inch (SATA and PATA) and 1.8-inch Micro SATA devices, featuring native SATA 3Gb/s or ATA-7 interfaces with up to 100MB/s read speeds write speeds up to 80MB/s. Max available capacity is 120GB. No word yet on specific products or prices, but you'll know as soon as we do.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have developed an ultra-dense memory chip that is capable of storing data for up to a billion years (besting silicon chips by roughly... a billion years). Consisting of a crystalline iron nanoparticle shuttle encased within a multiwalled carbon nanotube, the device can be written to and read from using conventional voltages already available in digital electronics today. The research was led by Alex Zettl, who notes that current digital storage methods are capable of storing mass amounts of data, but last just decades, while, say, some books have managed to last nearly a thousand years, though the amount of data they contain is quite small. The new method, called shuttle memory, is based on the iron nanoparticle which can move back and forth within the hollow nanotu. Zettl believes that, while shuttle memory is years away from practical application, it could have a lot of archival applications in the future. There's a video after the break, hit the read link for more tiny details.

[Via The Register]