Orange County Register

**UPDATE, July 30, 2008** Wrong! Due to incorrect information from the PR person at Fabrik, the bamboo isn’t grown in OC. See “Bamboo hard drives not made in OC” for the complete update.**

Fabrik Inc. made a big splash today with its new SimpleTech [re]drive line of “energy efficient, resource-conscious” computer hard drives.

While the drive has a few technical advances (a fanless cooling system, low-powered drive and an Energy Start adapter to help cut energy usage by 90 percent over comparable drives), it’s the case that caught my attention.

The housing is made from bamboo and recycled aluminum.

The bamboo is grown at Fabrik’s Santa Ana manufacturing facility, which cuts down on transportation costs, says the company. Uh, how’s that? A tech company is growing and using bamboo at its office?

I immediately thought of dozens of questions: Who takes care of the bamboo? Does someone come in weekly to chop down the bamboo? How many hard drive cases can one bamboo stalk cover? And, if there are too many orders, must the drive be back-ordered while the bamboo grows?

I have a call in and will get the answers as soon as I can. Stay tuned.

Other [re]drive features:

• Has “Turbo” USB 2.0 (huh? Oh and oh…), which is 25 percent faster than USB 2.0, which speeds up performance
• Includes automated back-up software
• Users get a free 2 GB account at Fabrik’s Ultimate Backup site (or $4.95 a month for unlimited online back-up storage).
• The recycled aluminum case also “acts as a heat sink, cooling the drive without the use of a fan, saving additional energy and noise,” says the company.
• Price: $160 for 500-GB drive

More images:

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