Digital storage manufacturer Buffalo is celebrating its 50th anniversary with the limited-edition HD-SKL Skeleton HDD. It’s an attractive little showpiece—an external hard drive with a “window” that lets you see the spinning platter and R/W head—but it appears to be a Japan-exclusive item.
The HD-SKL Skeleton Disk Drive’s enclosure is extremely flashy, featuring black machined aluminum housing with gold accents, the aforementioned HDD “window,” plus a couple of exposed wires the run between the drive and its USB interface. This device sits in an upright, tilted position, meaning that you can see the drive spin and twitch as it reads and writes data. It’d be a pretty neat addition to any desk.
And although its specs are honestly kind of irrelevant, the HD-SKL sports a 4TB capacity and a USB 3.2 (Gen 1) Type-C interface. It and requires an AC adapter. Bufflo hasn’t specified the transfer rate, though real-world speed probably falls somewhere below 150MBps. This is a hard drive, after all. Buffalo says that the drive will work with any computer, be it a PC or a Mac, though the company’s SeekWizard software only works on Windows.
Interestingly, the HD-SKL is a direct descendent of Buffalo’s 1998 Skeleton Hard Disk—a luxury device that was sold in a limited run of 500 units, according to an old Yahoo Japan auctions listing (I couldn’t find a more authoritative source). The old Skeleton Hard Disk was limited to 4.3GB of storage and had a clear acrylic case, rather than a machined aluminum housing. Buffalo also cites its 1978 Melco 3533 turntable as a source of inspiration; I fail to see the resemblance, though the Melco 3533’s open-air design could be loosely interpreted as a precursor to the see-thru Skeleton HDD.
While I’m a big fan of the HD-SKL, I honestly prefer Buffalo’s original Skeleton Hard Disk. The fully-translucent design of the 1998 model is just a ton of fun. The HD-SKL seems to have lost some of its fun factor in favor of coolness, stylishness, luxury vibes—you get what I’m saying, right?
I’d also love to know what’s going on under the HD-SKL’s aluminum frame. If you unscrew this thing, is there a transparent drive hiding inside, or does the aluminum housing serve as the drive’s chassis? And if someone wants to reuse this drive enclosure in the future, will they be able to swap in a new HDD? I guess it depends on several factors, like whether the USB interface is soldered to the drive or not. Of course, you’d also need to tear apart a perfectly good HDD to complete such a transplant.
Unfortunately, Buffalo hasn’t shown any indication that this HDD will be sold in the United States, or anywhere outside Japan, for that matter. And because the HD-SKL is limited to 50 units, it’s subject to a raffle system—each winner gets the chance to blow ¥100,000 (approximately $695 USD) on the HD-SKL, and I assume that scalpers will push aftermarket prices far higher. If you happen to be in Japan, you can sign up for the raffle at the Buffalo website.
Source: Buffalo via Tom’s Hardware
