Clad in bamboo and recyclable aluminum; nestled in environmentally responsible packaging; and mated to an Energy Star power adapter, Fabrik is billing its SimpleTech [re]drive as the "world's most eco-friendly external drive."

You see, it automatically powers on and off with your computer. Not the biggest innovation, mind you, but it sure beats discovering that your drive has been spinning all night for no reason as has happened a zillion times to this blogger.

At $159.99 for 500GB, it's a little pricey (roughly a 50% premium), but it sports a distinctive look and some software to make backups a painless affair. For both PCs and Macs, the [re]drive ships with wizard-driven software to automate backups and even create a disaster recovery CD for PCs. Another bonus for PC users is anti-virus detection to help make certain that malware infested files don't befoul your backups.

Don't forget the Turbo USB 2.0 interface that promises to speed things up by up to 25% over plain USB 2.0.

And what's a backup solution without a cloud-based alternative these days? Fabrik makes 2GB of encrypted, online storage available via Fabrik Ultimate Backup. Unlimited capacity costs $5/month.