If this headline doesn’t get your geek genes in an uproar, you might as well give up. The previous largest drive in a consumer product was (I believe) 160 or 200 gigs. It’s not all good, as the article makes clear. Still, it will mean major improvements in the number of shows you can record without losing any. Just that many more episodes of Star Trek!

One point to keep in mind is that it also increases the need for an uninterruptible power supply of one brand or another, not to mention surge protection. I know - it’s a subject we’d all like to be able to ignore, but Mother Nature can be tricky - as about 68,000 customers found out in the counties around Cleveland, Ohio. As of this moment, some 35,000 are still in the dark and likely will be until some time tomorrow (if they’re lucky).

Richard Shim of CNET News writes:

Seagate representatives are demonstrating the new DVR features for cable service carriers at the National Cable Show conference in San Francisco this week.

For storage-hungry consumers, the company is showing an add-on 400GB external hard drive, which is being tested with cable operators. The drive at the show attaches to the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8300 Series DVR. Seagate is also demonstrating a prototype 2.5-inch 120GB hard drive that can be added internally to set-top boxes.

On Monday, the company unveiled its DriveTrust software, designed to ease concerns about digital-rights management. DriveTrust allows cable operators and DVR makers to lock external storage products to a specific device, such as a set-top box. The software can be customized to work with a cable company’s network.

[Continue reading Seagate Queues Up 400-Gig DVR]