Hope you’re all set with your storage needs.

The heavy rains that fell in Thailand this fall have led to serious flooding. The floods forced many of the world’s hard drive-producing factories to temporarily shut down.

The factory closures have affected several companies, including Western Digital and Seagate and some 40 percent of world hard drive manufacturing.

You can expect hard drive shortages. A few of the hard drives we’re tried to review this month — or include in gift guides — could not be sent to us because some companies have suspended their review programs.

With PC sales already slowing, this could have huge implications for the industry.

Interestingly, solid-state hard drive manufacturing was not affected, which may also lead to this medium taking off more and more.

It’s no secret video games are trending towards digitalization. It happend with music and it’s happening with video games. But with this digitizing of software, large hard drives are needed to store all the goods.

Today, GameStop has listed a 250 GB Xbox 360 hard drive for $129.99.

250 big ones

The hard drive, previously only available in the Modern Warfare 2 Super Elite bundle, is supposedly going on sale in March, but not without some controversy.

Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg told Joysitq “We’re always evaluating, but for now we feel like the 120 is serving us very well as the standard offering, and then having the 250 as a limited edition is a good balance.”

No official word has come down from Microsoft about the move to sell the spacious hard drive just yet, but when they comment, and they likely will, we’ll have it.

Source: Destructoid

Seagate calls their new Replica drive an “appliance,” and it’s a rare apt marketing plot.

You see, by 2012, Seagate and other research firms estimate the average household will store more than a terabyte of data, including videos, family photos, music, programs, vital documents and even homework. Currently, less than half of consumers back up their data.

People think they don’t need to back up their files, and others think it takes too much time. Still more people don’t know how to preserve their files.

That’s where the “appliance” comes in.

Seagate wants you to consider a backup drive int he same light that you look at your refrigerator or oven — an appliance with a single, vital use. And the company has finally made it easy.

We tested the Seagate Replica 500GB Multiple PC backup drive, and we were impressed. As soon as you plug in the drive, the device is ready to start backing up your files. We’re used to installing software and going through a little (a lot) of configuration, but Seagate’s just saying “screw it — let’s just back up the damn drive.”

It’s effortless. Every time you back up a drive, the on-board software overwrites the oldest versions of each file, so you can avoid clutter and a quickly filled drive.

The drive will quickly fill, however, if you have all your eggs in one basket. If you have all your videos and music and photos on your C: drive, the software is going to have you do a little work. That’s the one bad thing we found with this drive. A “mere” 500GB just doesn’t do it in the iTunes age, where every time you download a video, you’re getting a 500MB standard version and a huge high-definition version.

When this product is available in a 2TB setting — or more — then we can safely say we’re in the backup appliance age.

But assuming for a second that 500GB is enough for you, the Replica functions better as a single PC backup solution than a multi-PC solution. The included dock insinuates that you can put the drive on a desk and back up all your computers from there, but that’s useless if you have a desktop in your bedroom and another in the basement.

For a single PC, or a PC and a laptop, the automation of the Replica makes it easy to back up your system files, documents, and some of your multimedia files. As ease of use goes, the Replica is as good as it currently gets.

While the size does matter, the Replica is a great solution. The included recovery CD allows you to restore your computer to its original state, even if your internal hard drive fails. This function combines with the practical ability to drag and drop backed up files if you delete them accidentally from your PC. The Replica is a functional, useful tool, if not totally an appliance yet.

The 500GB Multi-PC version is available for $129. A 250GB single-PC model sells for $88.

The portability on portable external hard drives is questionable. I’ve already gone through three 500GB drives in a little under a year. The backup drives are failing faster than the main internal drives.

That’s when this Other World Computing Mercury On-The-Go crossed the desk of the Blast Newsroom. It’s a 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200RPM drive paired with a casing designed to displace heat.

Still don’t recommend throwing it against a brick wall.

The Mercury On-The-Go’s first characteristic is that it’s dead silent. It makes almost no noise whatsoever.

Read/write time is compartable to most USB 2.0 drives.

Second, there’s an aluminum heatsink running through the length of the drive with vents allowing hot air to pass through. There are no fans, but this passive cooling outfit does keep things running smoothly. Even after a half hour of benchmarking over and over, the heatsink was lukewarm and the hard drive was running steadily fast.

How steadily fast? About 32MB/s. in USB mode, which is comparable to other drives we’ve tested. It’s not even half as fast as a good internal desktop hard drive, but it’s fast enough for bulk storage, backup, music, non HD movies and all your photos.

The triple interface — FireWire 400/800 and USB 2.0 — is a nice touch. USB is still the easiest way to go for most people, however, so that’s what we benchmark at. FireWire can be much faster, however, and the manufacturer boasts about 150MB/s speeds that we don’t think you’ll ever see unless you strip down your computer and don’t run any other applications while accessing your hard drive.

The drive is also OSX Leopard Time Machine ready, so you have that bell or whistle.

Overall, the Mercury is an excellent drive that’s fast and durable. It’s an ideal storage upgrade situation.

The only x-factor is the cost, which will run you upwards of $200, when you can buy a 500GB drive for much less nowadays.

By the way: Because of incorrect information provided to Blast, we reported that an eSATA version was available, but that product has been canceled and is not available.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced today that it is now shipping the world’s first, two terabyte, 7200 RPM hard disk drive.

The new 2TB Deskstar 7K2000 is a high performance, super-high capacity drive with a five-platter design and a 32MB cache and 3GB per second SATA interface.

“The new Deskstar 7K2000 reflects our ongoing commitment to provide customers, channel partners and OEMs with proven, reliable solutions for enabling desktop computers, gaming systems, workstations and desktop RAID arrays” said Brendan Collins, vice president of marketing of Hitachi GST. “At Hitachi, we continue to offer one of the broadest product lines in the world with a focus on delivering industry-leading hard drives that meet the reliability, performance, capacity and power needs of a variety of traditional and emerging market segments.”

Because every portable device we carry around with you says something about who you are — you know you judge every iPhone user — Iomega believes that your portable hard drive should as well, and from what we see, they seem to have delivered. The Iomega eGo portable hard drives are sleek devices, covered in anodized aluminum in multiple colors along with little shiny bits to further raise the eye-catching factor.

The eGo series comes in a range of sizes expected for a portable hard drive, between 250GB and 500GB. Iomega promises that the devices can survive falls of over four feet, which is quite decent, though I wouldn’t decide to test these limits on purpose. The devices are USB 2.0 powered, meaning you don’t have to carry around another power brick.

Iomega also included some nifty extras; the device comes with download instructions for McAfee VirusScan Plus to guard against viruses and malware (obviously useless to OS X users), a few backup utilities (slightly redundant for OS X users who know what Time Machine is), and a 2BG cloud storage with MozyHome. An extra all users can appreciate is a Y-shaped USB splitter that frees up the USB port that the hard drive is plugged into.

These are certainly great dad and grad gift ideas; they’re neat looking tools in a neat package.

Iomega, a company under the wing of local tech and storage giant EMC Corporation, announced Wednesday that they have released a New England Patriots-themed portable hard drive.

The Iomega eGo Patriots edition is decked out with the team logo above a 2.5″ 250 GB hard drive.

The tiny drive is a USB 2.0 product and retails for $129.99 at local retailers including Staples, the Patriots ProShop, and online at Patriots.com.

The eGo also comes with EMC’s Retrospect Express HD backup software, which allows automatic and on-demand backups of your files and drives. It works with Windows and Mac computers.

I’m working on another one of my Globe Tests articles for the Boston Sunday Globe business section, where I get to do what I normally do: play with fun toys.

Last time, it was computer mice, and the Globe and Blast saw something like 12 computer mouse reviews as a result.

The WD My Passport Studio maxed out at 32.7 MB/sec, which is admirable.

This time, it’s portable hard drives.

One of the drives that my story will feature is the Western Digital My Passport Elite, a delicious, beautiful 2.5-inch 500 gigabyte USB 2.0 hard drive with a soft, leathery finish‚  and a 5-year warranty.

One of the drives that didn’t make it into the story, however, is the WD My Passport Studio, another 2.5-inch 500 GB hard drive, only this one is formatted for Mac and supports FireWire 400 and 800 for faster data movement.

We test drives with HD Tune Pro 3.10. The two drives are virtually identical on USB 2.0 mode.

The My Passport Elite was just as good, really

The Studio tested just a little bit faster, but that could easily just have been random background interference. For all intents and purposes, the Studio is an elite with Firewire and Mac-formatting, and that’s really yummy (yeah I didn’t have dinner tonight, I’m hungry) for video folks, graphic designers, photographers, etc., because 500 GB is just a sick amount of data (today). I don’t care who you are.

The Studio is formatted HFS+ Journaled, and it‚  supports Apple Time Machine

The only major difference: the My Passport Studio doesn’t have the Soft-touch Finish. What gives WD? You couldn’t leather this one up too?

It’s important to note that while they’re small and possibly edible, these are still hard drives — rotating metal discs and lots of moving parts. Just because they’re small doesn’t mean they’re iPod Nano’s. They’re designed to be packed up and move around but I wouldn’t go jogging with one in my pocket.

Both drives have lighted capacity indicators showing you how full the drive is, which is useful if you plug it into a server and are doing automatic backups.

Both drives also are 100 percent powered by the computer you plug it into — no external power supply required.

By the way, 500 GB can hold 220 hours of DVD video, 125,000 MP3s, or 142,000 high-resolution photos.

Please look out for my Globe Tests column this Sunday in the Boston Globe Money & Careers section or Boston.com/Business!

I thought I broke it. But I didn’t. Phew.

The Buffalo MiniStation DataVault is a tiny little 160GB 5400 RPM hard drive that is completely powered by mini USB and features full disk encryption/password access for a nice touch of portable security.

It really is small. It’s not much larger than a first generation iPod.

Getting back to the first paragraph, Buffalo advertises that the HDD is suspended on shock absorbers in the case, protecting it from … stuff. Clearly, the best way to test this was to transfer a bunch of big files onto it and then start shaking it like a bottle of water with one of those Crystal Light On the Go packets poured in.

Then I dropped it on the ground. Not hard. Just so.

Then Explorer froze and crashed.

I pulled the plug, restarted Explorer and plugged the drive back in. Vista warned me that the drive was improperly turned off last time and offered to do a scan to check things out. It turned up clean and about half the files had transferred onto the disc. I transferred a bunch more to and from the drive and it seemed to work fine. I’ll let the reader be the judge there.

The best thing about the drive is that it’s truly plug-n-play. I plugged it into a USB port and it was asking me for the password in seconds. I also like that it draws all its power from USB and doesn’t require another one of my vital AC sockets.

As far as performance goes, HD Tune averaged about 28 MB/sec read and about 27 write, which is above average for a USB drive.

We test drives with HD Tune Pro 3.10.

The drive comes pre-loaded with Memeo backup software and Firefox and Thunderbird portable with a taskbar app to launch all the portable programs you want to load onto it. (Big fan)

It seems like a good drive and a great bargain at under $100.

Just in case, Buffalo does give a 3-year manufacturer warranty.

Western Digital added 750GB and 1TB SATA drives with up to 32MB cache and enhanced vibration and shock tolerance.

Hawt.

Translation: Huge drive. Fits your music, movies, pics, games, docs, and about 1,600 full-length MPEG/Divx movies or hundreds of uncompressed DVD movies. Huge cache. Lets you access them fast. Shock protection. You could walk around shaking it like a maraca, and it would still work.

Hawt.

WD RE3 1 TB (model WD 1002FBYS) and the 750 GB (model WD57502ABYS) hard drives are available now for $249 and $199, which may be the best part.

Who said they were all about cassette tapes?

Memorex just announced the Essential TravelDrive, a 2.5″ USB hard disk that maxes out at 320GB with several bright and shiny colors that fits right in your pocket, purse, laptop bag, etc.

The TravelDrive comes in 160, 250 and 320 gigabyte models, great for photos, video, audio and tons of files. They’re also powered by USB, so no additional power source is needed.

Starting at $89.99, they’re priced just right, too.

It seems like everybody is going green lately, and now we’re seeing that trend emerge in the saturated world of external hard drives.

Storage solutions provider Fabrik announced the SimpleTech [re]drive, a 500GB external hard drive that they are dubbing the world’s most energy-efficient, resource-conscious external drive.

The [re]drive is made from sustainable bamboo wood and recycled aluminum and features fanless cooling and Energy Star-compliant power. The company says it uses just 10 percent the power of traditional external drives.

Even the drive itself is made from recyclable materials.

The [re]drive also includes 2GBs of online "cloud" backup with Fabrik’s Ultimate Backup or $4.95 per month for unlimited capacity.

Fabrik also announced a 1TB external drive and a mini drive with 500GB capacity.

The [re]drive retails for $159.99.