February 24 - 7:00am EST   Hitachi GST today has announced it will be acquiring Fabrik, a privately-held supplier of personal and professional storage devices. As a result of the integration, Fabrik will remain intact and work as the core of Hitachi GST’s newly-formed external storage business. In addition, Hitachi will also be offering full support of Fabrik’s G-Technology and SimpleTech storage brands. According to President of Hitachi Steve Miligan, the combination of the two companies will expand their market reach and bolster their combined product range. [full story]

July 28 - 9:25am EDT   Fabrik's home label SimpleTech today launched a new suite of external hard drives headlined by the [re]drive, its first consciously green hard drive. The new disk is shelled with both an aluminum frame and natural bamboo covers that let the user recycle the external casing much more easily than the plastic from most drives. Choosing these materials also has the upside of cooling the 3.5-inch disk inside without needing fans that add to noise and power draw. [full story]

January 16 - 2:55pm EST   G-Technology, just absorbed by rival Fabrik, has announced two upcoming external hard drives. The first of these is a new version of the G-RAID mini, raised in capacity from 500GB to 1TB. The Mini is intended to be a portable RAID drive, using a striped (RAID 0) configuration. FireWire 400, 800 and USB 2.0 connections are available; when using FireWire 800, the drive is said to be fast enough to stream multiple video layers in apps such as Final Cut Pro. The drive is further equipped with a fan and heat sink, making is less susceptible to failure. It is Mac and PC compatible, and should ship sometime in March. [full story]