Say RAID to some people and they think you are trying to kill ants or other bugs in your home. To the geek, RAID a way to make data access faster or more secure. When it comes to backing up important data, RAID mirroring is one of the best ways to do it.

Addonics announced a new enclosure called the Portable Dual Drive Enclosure that gives RAID capability to the portable user. Addonics says the enclosure can be powered by the USB port alone or can be powered with an AC adapter. The enclosure can hold a pair of 2.5-inch SATA drives up to 9.5mm in height.

Going green is the latest big thing for companies and product manufacturers. Many different items we use with our computers are getting more energy efficient. The gear is also being built with materials that have less of an impact on the environment– certainly a good thing.

Fabrik has announced what it calls the world’s most eco-friendly external hard drive today called the Fabrik SimpleTech [re]drive. The drive enclosure is made from recycled aluminum and bamboo. Fabrik packages an Energy Star power adapter with the drive and the actual package material the [re]drive ships in is made from 100% recycled materials.

Over a year ago Data Robotics burst onto the scene with an external hard drive storage solution that address the big issues that users of external storage have—capacity and data security. The Drobo wasn’t the cheapest solution out there, but the storage capacity could be continually increased by swapping SATA drives as needed without risking data on the RAID array.

The second generation Drobo storage system has all of the features that the original had like four hot swappable drive bays that will work with any brand and capacity SATA hard drive. The new Drobo also has the RAID data protection capability and shares the original Drobo’s tolerance for drive failure without damaging the data on the RAID array.