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

Optical interconnects and stackables

[G4from128k]

If high speed optical interconnects become common, they could make brick-based PCs with stackable components. Unlike current stackable HDs, the HD brick would need no cables or external power brick as top and bottom surface of each brick would carry power and data.

Different Lego-like knoblets on top and bottom of each brick would correspond to different interconnect functions (one or more knoblets each for +5 VDC, +3.3 VDC, Optical-PCI, Optical-ATA, etc.). Aligned vent holes throughout the stack would allow the base PSU brick to pull cooling air from the other bricks. Adding a new video card or HD would be as simple as snapping the card to the top of the PC.

Re:Not lego sized, just lego shaped

[b1t r0t]

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.

Sometimes it's the drive itself. Sometimes it's the fan, a friend of mine had two of a specific model where the fan went bad, then I checked one of mine and its fan was dead too. Sometimes it's the power supply; I think that's the real reason they're all using external power bricks these days, more so than the safety issue of having semi-exposed AC wiring with a built-in power supply. And sometimes it could be the controller card; I have one with a dead Firewire port, good thing they come in pairs.

All that being said, I wouldn't want one of these without a Firewire port. It's kind of sad that a long-time seller of external drives for the Macintosh now sells a model of external case with only USB support.

Why stop at the hard drive

[Chris6502]

This guy built his whole machine from lego: http://home.hawaii.rr.com/chowfamily/lego/