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The Up Memory Tower’s Modular Hard Drive Stacks Up Storage

09.21.18 | By
The Up Memory Tower’s Modular Hard Drive Stacks Up Storage

Most of us remember stacking up toy blocks as toddlers, the toys teaching us our 1-2-3s and ABCs. Anton Repponen’s Up Memory Tower Modular Hard Drive system taps into the same memory in service of memory…computer data storage memory.

Photographers, video editors, and designers working with hefty image sizes often requiring hard drive storage capacities measured in terabytes, far exceeding the average user safely served by gigabyte capacity storage. In these instances RAID (redundant array of independent disks) servers and NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices are commonly integrated into workflows where RAW or video files can fill up capacity within minutes, providing large capacities with the option to expand or remove storage to meet professional demands. The UP Memory Tower concept answers this same need, improved with a graphical system integrating numerical markers and color to clearly communicate how much storage is being added or removed.

The modular design allows users to buy additional stacks of storage capacity and add them together into a color coded tower. The top is capped with a cooling fan to keep the entire collection of drives cooled while in use. Repponen also imagines his design allowing users the option to remove sections of any storage tower when the purposes of travel arise, integrating an element of portability (this of course would require storage software to designate how and where files are kept for the task of portability).

The ease and seemingly endless capacity of cloud storage has transformed data storage for users from all walks of life. But for photo, video, and design professionals whose work relies up data transfer speeds and easy access, locally stored files on physical mediums remain the most trusted standard. The UP Memory Tower concept proposes the solution can be measurably easier to understand at a glance, while also proposing a more beautiful presence in the studio.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.