The self-incriminating clause of the Fifth Amendment is always a great help for defendants who want to keep their encrypted hard drives from being decrypted when prosecution asks for it, until now. A Colorado federal judge has ruled that decrypting a computer hard drive does not violate the defendant’s rights.

The ruling came in a case against Ramona Fricosu, who is charged with mortgage fraud. She had argued that decrypting the data on her hard drive would require her to testify against herself, which is prohibited by the US Bill of Rights.

But Judge Robert Blackburn decided differently. According to him, “the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer”.

He cited the case of one Sebastien Boucher, who was asked to decrypt an incriminating hard drive, to support his ruling. In Boucher’s case, the court took the decision that, while the defendant’s encryption password was protected, the data on the drive could be considered evidence in the case.

Fricosu has been ordered to decrypt her drive no later than February 21 or face contempt of court. But her lawyers are fighting the decision and have asked for a stay.

But the question now is not whether Fricosu will be found guilty, but how courtrooms should consider access to data. Debates are on at the moment and the case is definitely going to be an important one considering the application of the Fifth Amendment rights in the digital age.

[ source ]

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Apparently, researchers in Singapore have come up with a solution wherein hard drives can effectively gain a six-fold increase in storage density. What this means it that you may soon have a 3TB drive on the same size platter as your existing 500GB. Better still, your 1TB could be replaced with a 6TB drive without having to get any bigger physically.

The way that existing hard drives work is that randomly distributed nanoscopic grains are spread out over the spinning magnetic platters. These get into disorganized clumps of ten, each of which form one bit of data. With the new idea, quarterbacked by Joel Yang from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) in Singapore, larger grains in regular patterns are used instead. This is more organized, just like when you are “packing your clothes in your suitcae.”

Fine nano-scale structures are produced through an e-beam lithography process. Coupled with the addition of regular old sodium chloride, you can get nanostructures with a much higher resolution. The net result? More density and, thus, more capacity on the same size platter. We’re at early stages right now, but this could bode well for our increasingly beyond HD lifestyles.

Photo: Wired

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We first learned of the Archos G9 tablets back in June. At the time, we were very happy to hear about the dual core 1.5GHz processor and the beefy 250GB hard drive. Now, you can start pre-ordering the device.

There was a bump in price announced shortly after their unveiling, but it seems like that bump is going to be the last one. As a quick refresher, the cheapest of the bunch is the Archos 80 G9 with a 1GHz processor and 8GB of storage for $299. That’s with an 8-inch screen and Honeycomb under the hood.

The real star, of course, is when you get up to the Archos 101 G9 with the 1.5GHz processor and 250GB hard drive for $469. Both of these upgrades, as well as a 16GB flash option, are available on the 8-inch variant as well with prices fitting accordingly. The 16GB Archos 80 G9 is priced at $329 and comes with the faster processor. Move up to the hard drive and that’s $369. For the 10-inch Archos G9, you don’t get the 8GB option, but the 16GB flash model is available at $399.

Pre-orders are being taken now with shipment expected by the end of the month It’s nice to see Archos finally embrace Honeycomb and full Android Market support. They’ve been at the tablet game for much longer than most other companies. How this will sell compared to the Eee Pads and Xooms of the world remains to be seen.

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Said to be “built for the harsh realities of life,” this ruggedized case will protect your portable spinning platter for drops of up to seven feet. Go ahead and dunk water all over the drive or throw it through the desert sand. The Nomad should keep your data safe and functional. There’s a “shock-absorbing elastomer cushion” on the inside and a polycarbonate casing on the outside.

If you’re thinking this sounds mildly familiar, you might remember the LaCie Tank, which offered some similar claims. Both adhere to military specs for ruggedness and both chime in at a similar $30 price point. WD just better hope that Creative doesn’t get on their back about the whole Nomad naming scheme.

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The deal is worth $3.5 billion in cash and $750 million in WD common stock. The brand and headquarters for Western Digital will emerge out the other end, but Hitachi GST’s president and CEO will take over as the president of Western Digital.

Will this help or hurt innovation? Will this help or hurt competition? Well, we already saw a similar deal six years ago when Seagate picked up Maxtor for $2 billion. With today’s announcement, the WD vs. Seagate battle just stepped up another notch, as if it wasn’t already clear enough that these are the two biggest juggernauts in the HDD game.

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The portable storage solution follows the branding scheme of other Asus Lamborghini products. You don’t really get the keys to a supercar when you buy this drive, but it certainly has more personality than the conventional grey box of an external drive.

In terms of specs, the shiny package (which is available in your choice of black or white; no cherry red or vibrant yellow options just yet) features a 750GB 2.5-inch drive (either 5400rpm or 7200rpm) that you can access either through USB 2.0 or the speedier USB 3.0. The FlexSave tech makes for easy data backups too.

Not everyone is going to want such a gawdy external hard drive, but it’ll go well with your Asus Lamborghini notebook when you pull up to the local Starbucks in your Jetta. The 750GB model sells for $139 or you can go smaller with the $119 version with 500GB. Both of those are just USB 2.0, though, as the USB 3.0 iterations aren’t quite ready yet. I wonder if Acer will fire back with a Ferrari drive that’s “more than you can afford pal.”

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It’s that time of year again. The holiday shopping season is upon us and I think I might have found the perfect gift for the 80s movie buff on your list. It’s cool enough that this is a pretty good replica of the Delorean from Back to the Future. It’s even better than it’s actually functional too.

That’s because the scale model actually hads a fully-functional 500GB portable hard drive inside. In addition to geeking out on your memories of Doc Brown and Marty McFly (when are we finally going to get those awesome hoverboards?), you can store your favorite movies, music, and documents on there too.

The Delorean replica is built on a 1:18 scale and it has moving parts too, including both gull-wing doors and the hood. The USB connector is in the back. Expect to pay a hefty $250 for this piece of geekdom.

Another down side? It doesn’t come with a flux capacitor and seeing how it only has a USB 2.0 connection, you might have a hard time reaching the required 88mph to hit the jump. [UberGizmo, FlashRods]

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Securing data is important, particularly in a corporate environment where business communications can be critically confidential. Combustion is never an environmentally sound solution for handling confidential materials. Making this a bit more green, and simpler, is the new Wipe technology announced by Toshiba today. It works in tandem with the company’s Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) models.

In short, the technology allows for private data to be fundamentally erased from the hard drives when a system is turned off, or when the SED hard drive is removed from the system. This secure erasure is crucial for when machines are returned, serviced, disposed, re-purposed, or otherwise taken away.

The idea started with notebook computers and all the data that their hard drives could contain coming from data sensitive environments, but it also extends into the realm of copiers, printers, and other similar machines which store images and private data. Many of these systems contain hard drives and, well, you don’t want to keep an image of that confidential social security number, or other valuable document available to peering eyes.

By using Wipe Technology, the data is automatically “invalidated” by the hard drive itself, which is faster than over-write data erasure or physical destruction methods. Not a bad idea from Toshiba.

[Toshiba]

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Second, Samsung is offering the Spinpoint MP4 at capacities as big as 640GB. That breaks the 500GB barrier that has largely been holding back notebook drives for some time. Western Digital has a 750GB drive, but it’s stuck at 5400rpm.

The Samsung Spinpoint MP4 features 16MB of onboard cache and a SATA 3Gbit/s interface. In addition to the 640GB model, Samsung is also offering the drive in 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB flavors. They may make an external hard drive based on this product too.

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Crunchgear’s Devin Coledewey took the biggest of the big kahunas out for a spin and his conclusion sounds exactly like what you’d expect it to sound like. This thing is big. And rugged. Oh, and did we mention that it’s big?

That’s because this is the first time that we’ve seen a one-terabyte model of the LaCie Rugged XL external hard drive. Like all the smaller drives that have preceded it, this one comes wrapped up in a heavy rubber jacket, protecting it against all sorts of bumps, bruises, drops, and other debacles. The rubber also adds a nice grip.

The performance is pretty much in line with competing portable 3.5-inch drives, pushing a typical data transfer rate of about 30MB/sec over a USB 2.0 connection. This works for a single larger file, though one terabyte of several smaller files can take longer (16.5MB/sec).

The LaCie 1TB drive comes in at about a $30 premium over the average 1TB competitor, so it’s up to you whether it’s worth its $140 asking price. You don’t get anything more with performance or portability (it can’t be bus-powered), but you get a little peace of mind with the rubber bumpers.

Source: Crunchgear

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