We almost didn't believe our eyes, but Fabrik is launching a completely eco-friendly external drive.  And by completely, we mean completely. The outer shell of the 500GB Simpletech "Redrive" is constructed of 100-percent recycled aluminum and bamboo.  And even the drive's packaging seems to have been designed by a Planeteer: the box itself is made up of 100-percent recyclable material, and there are no extra plastic bags, twist ties, or printed marketing materials of any kind.  Even the user instructions for the Redrive itself are printed directly on the box, shown below:

The extra head-nod to the environment will add a mild cost overhead to the drive, priced at $160 for 500GB of storage.  Fabrik plans to offer both terabyte and portable versions of the Redrive over the course of the next year.  Expect all to share the same high-speed functionality promised in the 500GB version, as Fabrik's using TurboUSB technology--similar to what we've seen in Buffalo's DriveStation Combo 4--to squeeze an extra bit of performance out of the USB connection.

In talking with Fabrik, the company also stressed how it's able to offer the fastest and largest drives on the market.  As a third-party distributor of storage products, Fabrik can purchase the underlying hard drives from any vendor it pleases.  This allows the company to beat storage manufacturers to the market with a new drive technology, a fact I found rather fascinating.  Especially once Fabrik claimed that it was planning on selling the industry's first 1.5 terabyte external storage products.  There's no concrete ETA on that, so we'll see if Fabrik's able to live up to its boasting in future months.

Fabrik is also bringing two new portable drives to the market, styled in the same vein as the Simpletech Signature Mini drives we reviewed earlier.  The Cayenne and Ice drives will both float in at 250GB capacity points, half that of Simpletech's top storage point, the 500GB Espresso drive.  We've included pictures of these two new varieties below:

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storage, Hard Drive, hardware, build a pc, fabrik, redrive, green, cayenne, ice

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