This week, LaCie announced that the innovative 2big Triple hard drive, designed by Neil Poulton, has won an award for the Best Storage Back-up Solution from the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA). The annual TIPA Award is regarded as the most prestigious photo and imaging honor in Europe.

TIPA is composed of 30 independent industry publications from 13 European countries. The member publications have no relation with any manufacturer in the industry, allowing for neutrality to present awards to the best products of the year. The award is eligible to any company that manufactures photo, video and digital products. Products are judged for the award for ease of use, features and price.

The LaCie 2big Triple is a storage device with separate FireWire 800, FireWire 400, or USB 2.0 interfaces for high-speed data transfer. The 2big Triple is a RAID solution product that can be configured for safety or performance. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, which refers to technology that uses two or more hard disk drives simultaneously to enhance performance, reliability, and/or to create larger data volume sizes. The 2big Triple also features a naturally-cooling, heat-sink design and a thermoregulated progressive smart fan to keep noise to a minimum.

This product is available at various participating retailers, and is selling for approximately $350 for 1TB of storage space. More information on this product can be found at www.lacie.com.

SentrySafe, a security-storage container company specializing in products for residences and small offices, has just announced the release of the latest version of its data protection device, the 250GB Fire-Safe/Waterproof Hard Drive (model QA0005). This product is designed to protect computer data from fire and water disasters and computer crashes.

The SentrySafe Fire-Safe/Waterproof Hard Drive model QA0005 features an award-winning Maxtor OneTouch® 4 Mini™ hard drive. This hard drive is the first mobile storage unit that includes a full suite of software protection tools, such as data encryption. This hard drive is encased in the Sentry Fire-Safe/Waterproof container, which will protect your data from fire for up to 30 minutes and can be fully submerged in water for up to 24 hours.

The Firesafe/Waterproof Hard Drive will be sold for about $400 US. The product can be found at www.SentrySafe.com, www.thehomedepot.com, www.walmart.com, www.sams.com and www.amazon.com.

Product: WiebeTech DriveBox
Price: $5.95
Link: www.wiebetech.com
Rating: 5/5

At andPOP, we go through hard-drives like sheets of paper. Backups, video content and data storage mean were constantly swapping drives out of computers and placing them in external cases or on shelves for storage.

When I heard about the new DriveBox case from WiebeTech I wondered why I had never seen a product like this before. If a drive isn’t inside the computer, you will usually find it in an external case, but what do you do when you need to safely store drives? Normally, I store extra drives in external cases. While this is a convenient solution for accessing the data on the drive when needed, it can be expensive, and harmful to the drive if too much dust gets through the fan vents. I’ve personally lost two drives from storage by these means.

The only other storage cases I’ve seen are transport cases for drives already in external cases. This solution is costly and redundant.

The DriveBox is made of anti-static plastic and is used to store or transport bare hard drives. It has clips inside the case that are used to ensure a secure fit for your hard drive inside the case. Labels included with the DriveBox make it easy to keep track of what’s in the box.

The DriveBox is a perfect solution for anyone with a couple of drives laying around. If you’re data is important to you, don’t store your drives in the plastic wrap they came in and don’t spend extra money on an external inclosure if you don’t need to.

If you’re a pro user, the DriveBox is great for storing drives as you swap them in and out of RAID enclosures or transport them to different locations.

At $5.95 a case, there’s no question whether you should have some of these lying around to help protect your drives. If you value your data, this is a no-brainer.

DriveBox sells for $5.95 as a single case or $49.95 for 10. You can also order a DriveBox with a 500GB or 1TB (1000GB) SATA drive from the WiebeTech website for $173.95 and $432.95, respectively.