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.
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.
Though not exactly useful with regards to any of my own storage needs, I [[link]] still kinda want [[link]] 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 , or pine after and 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 ; perhaps I should put some of the yen I would've spent towards averting my own small-scale data storage apocalypse.