The Lego Brick Hard Drive

Billosaur writes "With Lego being in the news after completion of their lawsuit against Mega Bloks, I found this interesting little tidbit on Boing Boing, about a company that makes stackable Lego Brick-shaped Hard Drives. With Hi-Speed USB 2.0 interface, it offers the fast data transfer rates required for substantial jobs like downloading digital photos, saving MP3s or transferring home videos from a camcorder. Available desktop models are: 160GB (white), 250GB (red), 300GB (blue) and 500GB (red). But can you build a Star Destroyer out of them?"

Comments

Not lego sized, just lego shaped

[dada21]

These hard drives are LEGO shaped but not LEGO sized. It mimics the look and feel of a LEGO brick but it really isn't compatible (unless the bottom has much smaller divisions).

Stackable hard drives is a fine idea but I'd like to take one apart to see how ventilation is. I've had a much higher failure rate in external drives than internal drives (almost 3:1) over the past 6 years. I still wonder if it is heat or just bad power supplies in these things.

I'm more of a monotoned desktop kind of guy -- if I'm OCD about anything at all, it is definitely crazy colors all over the place. I think on my desktop (where I could have up to 5 different sized external drives depending on projects in action), these drives could end up looking like a bad website from the early days: color hell.

I think the pricing is decent though, and would love a breakdown of what "Power Supply Kit" means and how hardy these things are.

Re:Not lego sized, just lego shaped

[InvalidError]

If my experience with external enclosures is any indication, I would bet on the power supplies.

Most cheap/small PSUs use flyback topology and decoupling capacitors that have AC ripple ratings well below what they should be. Ordinary 1000-2200uF capacitors have AC ripple ratings under 1A and a service life of 2000-5000h at that rating. On 2-3A 5-12V rails with flyback PSU, this 1A(rms) rating is easily exceeded. This is why I have made it a standard practice to replace bulk decoupling capacitors in my storage boxes and PC PSUs by 2700uF caps rated for 7000+h at 3.6A ripple supplemented with surface-mounted 10uF MLCC caps to relieve the electrolytic caps from harmonics in the 100kHz-10MHz range wherever possible.

When output capacitors age in a flyback PSU, their impedance increase and the capacitors becomes unable to absorb high-frequency energy. This causes spikes in the output voltage and if the PSU does not have a proper shunt regulator or over-voltage crowbar circuitry, those spikes can definitely kill electronics - I have seen/measured microsecond-scale spikes go as high as 15V on a 5V rail and 20V on a 12V rail.

more duplo than lego

[BushCheney08]

It should be noted that these drives are more Duplo than Lego.

(Yes, I am aware that Duplo is in fact a line of Legos).

USB 2 for substantial jobs?

[Tumbleweed]

With Hi-Speed USB 2.0 interface, it offers the fast data transfer rates required for substantial jobs

Someone's an idiot. If you have a 'substantial' job for an external HD, you'd best be using at _least_ IEEE1394a (or better yet, b). External SATA would be quite lovely.

FA Porsche (not Porsche) vs Lego...

[WIAKywbfatw]

I too have a beautiful LaCie 80GB Mobile Hard Drive, with USB/Firewire support, but it's worth noting that the drive (and other drives in LaCie's product range) are actually designed by FA Porsche, which is not directly related to Porsche the car manufacturer.

If I recall correctly, the Porsche responsible for setting up FA Porsche is a blood relation to the Porsche that set up the car company but that's the extent of the connection. I'm sure someone will correctly if I'm wrong.

Anyhow, the FA Porsche-designed drives stack nicely and neatly too, plus they have the added advantage of not making you look ridiculous if you have to take one to a client's site.