When folks talk about transparent hardware, I'm sure I'm not the only one whose frame of reference is still stuck somewhere between the mid-90s and the early oughts. Besides sleuthing with Barbie on the family desktop, my earliest gaming memories involved affixing my tiny mitts to my semi-transparent Game Boy Color.
For a hot second back then, that purple-y plastic was very in vogue and though I still have a soft spot for those hard shells, I'm a little thankful transparent tech is ever so slightly more elegant these days.
Case in point, Buffalo Japan's commemorative 'skeleton' hard drive disc (via Techspot). To celebrate the company's 50th anniversary, Buffalo has released a modern take on its original see-through HDD, which made its debut all the way back in 1998. The 2025 rendition is called the Buffalo HD-SKL, and comes with an interesting mount that offers a front row seat as the actuator arm dances across the platter.
Though primarily a decorative, desk-side conversation starter, this transparent HDD is still very much functional thanks to a standard USB 3.2 (Gen 1) interface. The catch? Well, there are a few. For one, as you may have already guessed, the Buffalo HD-SKL is Japan-exclusive. For another, it costs 100,000 yen (which is about $696) and only offers 4 TB of space—that's hardly the best deal for the space.
Furthermore, Mac fiends are potentially out of luck as Buffalo's own dedicated software, SeekWizard, is Windows-only. This application allows you to run the Buffalo HD-SKL in a number of 'demo' modes, meaning you don't actually have to write anything to the drive to see the read/write heads fly. The demo modes available include 'second hand step,' 'random seek,' and 'sequential seek. '
Though not exactly useful with regards to any of my own storage needs, I still kinda want one. However, limited to just 50 units, it doesn't look like my still tiny mitts will get to leave finger smears anywhere near the see-through surface of this exceptionally pretty hard drive.
A Japan-exclusive lottery will ultimately determine who has a chance to splash their cash on this commemorative centrepiece, with shipments expected to go out in June.
Ah well, guess there's nothing for it but to risk hitting ebay for an old WD Raptor X, or pine after Jsaux's frosted backplate and Dbrand's teardown skin for Valve's Steam Deck handheld instead. Mind you, I don't rightly remember how old my own HDDs are now, so perhaps it wouldn't hurt to also sneak a peek at our best external hard drives guide; perhaps I should put some of the yen I would've spent towards averting my own small-scale data storage apocalypse.
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