harddrive

Media storage has come a long way since the days of the room-sized 3.75MB hard disk drives (HDDs) you had to carry around with a fork lift. Most recently, solid state drives (SSDs) have taken over, providing a much more durable means of storing your media, since there are no moving parts inside.

But just how durable are we talking here? It turns out, very. The Tech Report recently put six different drives through the wringer, and it’s been concluded that today’s SSDs will last a thousand years of use -- long enough to last until we find the technology to start literally storing data in the clouds.

If you need some extra storage or you've been waiting for a good quality portable hard drive at a great price, we've found a deal you should definitely jump on. The Western Digital 2TB My Passport Ultra is selling at an all-time low price of $80 right now on eBay.

Here's both a neat picture and a mind-blowing fact for you. What you see above is the IBM Model 350 Disk File from 1956. It weighed over a ton, contained fifty 24-inch disks, and was leased to companies for $3,200 per month. It could hold... 3.75 Megabytes.

That means that it would take 21 of these puppies to hold the largest 14-bit RAW file the Nikon D800 spits out.

It's not often a portable hard drive catches our eye, but the newest offering from Western Digital feels like it was built specifically for photographers. Completely wireless, the drive's features include an SD card slot so you can unload photos on-location without ever having to get an intermediary device involved.

Here's a cool product that could help the car photographers out there leave a memorable impression and turn first-time clients into repeat customers. Made by Flashrods, these car-shaped hard drives and flash drives are the perfect way to deliver the final photos to your clients in style.

Have you ever wondered why computers always indicate that your hard drive or memory card has a smaller storage capacity than what's advertised on the box (and the card itself)? No, it's not because you got a defective card, it's not because your card came preloaded with a bunch of unwanted files (your hard drives, maybe), and it's not because the manufacturers are cheating you by skimping out on the storage space (well, not directly, at least). The reason has to do with math and marketing.

It's unlikely you'll ever need to protect your digital photos from extreme elements (and if you have a 7D you know your camera will make it) but as the saying goes, it's better to be safe than sorry -- and apparently hard drives don't get much safer than the Slilicon Power A80. In a video that's equal parts fun and demonstration, photographer Benjamin Von Wong put the hard drive through a series of unrealistically harsh tests, making sure it still worked after each one.

This photo shows what 5MB of hard drive storage looked like in 1956. The IBM 305 RAMAC hard disk …

According to a survey conducted for SanDisk, 64% of adults in the US wouldn't consider destroying their photo collections for $1 million. At the same time, the general public probably doesn't spend nearly enough time and money ensuring the safety of those same photos.

It’s a good time to be a digital photographer — massive hard drives are becoming cheaper than ever, making …

If the entire Calvin and Hobbes collection can be found in a complete set, then why shouldn't National Geographic? Well now it can!