Dell has added an option to install a 32GB SSD solid state drive to their Dell Mini 9 netbook purchase. It adds an extra $100 to the base price of $349 for the unit, however. Click here to access their online store if you want to take the leap into more speedy memory for your netbook.

The unit comes packed in with a paltry 4GB of SSD drive support so paying $100 for an extra 28GB doesn’t sound like that bad of a deal. To put it in perspective, it costs half that much to make your Mini 9 pink.

Toshiba has announced it will be shipping their 500GB laptop drive in December, in time for the holiday season. The 500GB drive has a similar feature set to other drives. It’s 9.5mm, features a 2.5-inch 3Gbps SATA interface, 1.4 watt idle power draw and a 5,400rpm spin. It does lack full-disk hardware encryption, however. Toshiba has offered no word on the price.

Lenovo has announced their ThinkPad USB Portable Secure hard drive. It features a passcode system that uses a physical keypad. This should be useful for those who store sensitive information. The unit is just 3 x 5-inches, and is designed to pair up with ThinkPad laptops. It can have up to 10 unique user IDs and an admin account. The unit should be available by the end of the month. The 160GB model will cost $180 and the 320GB model will run $219.

For those of you who like a good horror movie, data recovery specialists Datacent has put together an extensive collection of recordings of popular hard drives failing. This could be useful if you are having problems with one of your drives and would like to pinpoint the issue. This could also be nostalgic, bringing you back to the time you lost just about everything you’ve ever cared about in one fell swoop. Some of the noises, though, are quite interesting. Assembling this must have been quite an undertaking and it’s well worth a listen. Click the link to hear the clicks of doom.

Hammer Storage, a division of Bell Microproducts, has released the morespace Portable hard drive. The pocket-friendly drive is light, weighing in at less than five ounces. Inside the beast, however, exists a 2.5 inch HDD ranging from 160GB to 750GB. It’s a USB 2.0 device and can be customized with your own protective and decorative skin. Pricing is "upon request" so shoot them out an email. The 160GB – 500GB units are available now with the 750GB unit holding off until January of 2009.