Last Gadget Standing nominee: Newer Technology Guardian MAXimus Mini
Price: starts at $229.99
Newer Technology’s Guardian MAXimus Mini is an external RAID (0 and 1) storage systen that protects your data by writing it to two drives. Nothing particularly noteworthy about that. But as the “Mini” in its name suggests, it’s small–really small, as you can see by the photo to the right. It also draws its power from its USB FireWire connection, making it truly mobile. It’s meant for Mac users but can be reformatted to work with any OS.
The MAXimus holds two 2.5 drives; a version with two 5400rpm 500GB disks costs $229.99, and there are higher capacity and 7200rpm options. But I’m fascinated by its highest-end versions, which use solid-state disks instead of spinning platters. A model with two 400GB SSDs costs $3299.99. I won’t be buying it, but I think it’s kind of neat it exists. (And I wonder how long it’ll be until falling flash prices make it affordable.)