"Hiding Data in Hard-drive Service Areas"

Interesting paper.

I suspect it would be more useful for Malware hiding from AV or other counter measures, than for data privacy or security.

PDF link http://www.recover.co.il/SA-cover/SA-cover.pdf

Nerd Gear: HDD Enclosures

Nice article here http://lifehacker.com/5955402/five-best-drive-enclosures about HDD enclosures.

They had a couple I hadn't heard about before, though they missed one I like, http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go is expensive, but I like the looks and the USB 3.0 & Firewire, I don't normally use Firewire, so the two of my machines that have Firewire on them, always have that available.

USB ports on the other hand, tend to be in short supply, I probably should get a good powered USB hub.

The other thing I like about the OWC On The Go Pro, is that you can get external power adapter for it, http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MOTGPWR/

With the external power adapter, and a OTG cable, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005FUNYSA/, I can use the external HDD with the Galaxy Note 2 I am getting myself for Christmas.

OTG cables don't provide power, so they can't power HDD or optical drives.

Nerd Gear: Retro HDD or SSD Enclosure

Lifehacker article http://lifehacker.com/5945693/retro-apple-floppy-drive-as-hdd-enclosure this interesting Retro Hardware idea of using old External Floppy Drive as external enclosure for HDD or SSD.

Guide for project, by johnmueller, here http://www.instructables.com/id/Vintage-Apple-External-Floppy-Drive-as-a-USB-HD-En/

Slick project, I like the cut down floppy disk, nice touch.

Also makes me think that you could, at least with some external floppy drive/HDD combinations maybe fit a full floppy in, would add a nice bit of security by obscurity for some important files.

Seeing an old floppy drive that didn't seem to work wouldn't lead most people to suspect a HDD inside.

Nerrd Gear: 960 GB SSD

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDEX3G960/

2.5" Serial-ATA 9.5mm Solid State Drive not cheap at $1,269.99 but nearly a Terabyte SSD would be awesome in a high end laptop. 

 I have no use for one personally, I do plan to put a ~120ish GB SSD into my laptop eventually as only practical upgrade for it, since it is already maxed on RAM it will support.

But I have to say, the Nerd in me wants this 960 GB SSD!!!!

Though I don't know what I would really do with it, I don't have a big movie, music, or pic collection.

Books are what I have a lot of, I have a few thousand deadtree books, but have been going mainly ebooks since they really started becoming available.

Ebooks are better in most ways than deadtree books, and they take almost no space by modern data storage standards.

On a side note, if anyone has good recommendation(s) for non Fiction Ebook reader please post them below, I still buy some text books in deadtree format, because I find it easier and faster to find information in them than I do on Kindle, Blackberry, or Kindle for PC.

I do have one a buddy that is a computer geek, that uses iPad for PDF tech manuals & etc, but I have tried my gf's iPad for that and not really impressed, it is certainly better for diagrams and schematics, and I recommend iPad 3 for that kind of Ebook use, but for me I just want to be able to navigate quickly through a sea of text.

I often need to go to a chapter or section somewhere in the middle of textbook, and I can do that easier and faster with deadtree, I also often need several books all open at once, and that just seems to work better with deadtree.

Now Fiction I totally enjoy on Ebook reader, but then I read those from start to finish, I don't need to jump to page 372, unless there was some phrase or something I liked, in which case Kindle highlight works fine.

Nerd Gear: Magnetic HDD recording data with heat!

From the ENGINEER: "Magnetic recording method could speed up hard drive",

York physicist Thomas Ostler said: ‘Instead of using a magnetic field to record information on a magnetic medium, we harnessed much stronger internal forces and recorded information using only heat.
‘This revolutionary method allows the recording of terabytes — thousands of gigabytes — of information per second, hundreds of times faster than present hard-drive technology. As there is no need for a magnetic field, there is also less energy consumption.’

Recording TERABYTES per SECOND!!!!!!!!!

I am going to just sit here and think about this for a bit, this seems stunning to me.

Good news for Casters & others that use Fraps, 18TB HDD on the way!

For those not familiar with  Fraps, it provides the following features, Benchmarking (displays FPS), Screen Capture, Realtime Video Capture (record games in HD).

There has been a breakthrough with HDD, providing up to 18TB HDD, more information here.