| Founded | Late 1990s |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | San Mateo, California, United States |
| Industry | External hard disk drive, backup and content management services |
SimpleTech is a consumer brand of external hard drives and backup products owned by Fabrik Inc. and designed to integrate hardware, software, and online services to help consumers store, protect, manage, and share digital content. The brand and product line was originally created by Simple Technology, a company founded in 1990, which later changed its name to SimpleTech in 2001.
SimpleTech (now STEC, Inc.) sold the SimpleTech brand and consumer products: flash memory cards, USB flash drives, memory upgrades, and external and portable disk drive storage, to Fabrik in February 2007.[1] Fabrik acquired the SimpleTech’s storage platform to integrate and deliver backup and content management software and web services (FabrikUltimateBackup.com and Joggle.com), allowing consumers to store, access, manage and share their digital content.[2]
The SimpleTech product line includes the Signature Mini USB Portable Drives, the Pro Drive family, and the environmentally friendly SimpleTech [re]drive.[3] The original design of the SimpleTech portable external storage product line was inspired by the Ferrari design team Pininfarina.[3][4][5][6]
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SimpleTech was originally founded as Simple Technology by two brothers in 1990, using $100,000 of their own savings; Chief Executive Manouch Moshayedi and President Mike Moshayedi. In 1993, the youngest brother at 38, Mark Moshayedi, joined the company as chief operating and technical officer.[7][8]
The company was acquired by STEC in 1998 for its flash memory technology and went public as Simple Technology in 2000. The name was shortened to SimpleTech and the company was sold to Fabrik for $42 million in 2007.[4][5][8] From 1990 to 2007, SimpleTech designed and manufactured flash (solid-state and non-volatile memory), including DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory), SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) and more.
In early 2007, STEC decided to focus on selling flash memory cards, solid state drives, and DRAM memory products to manufacturers and industrial distributors and sold the SimpleTech consumer division to Fabrik for $43 million.[4][5][8][9] The OEM business now operates as STEC, Inc and is publicly traded on NASDAQ.
Since then, Fabrik has continued to develop and market new products under the SimpleTech brand including the Joggle website and the environmentally friendly [re] drive.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16]
SimpleTech [re]drive – Described as the world’s most eco-friendly storage device, the [re]drive enclosure is made with 100 percent recyclable materials. It also automatically shuts off when your computer does and includes Energy Star Level 4 certified power adapters.
Fabrik recycles waste aluminum made during the manufacturing process and the product is sold in light packaging with recycled paper.
Joggle – Joggle is a free online digital content management site that was introduced in beta at the DEMO conference in early 2008. The Web site searches for video, photos and music on a user’s computer, external hard drive or online communities and networking sites and automatically consolidates it into a single online organizing and sharing tool.
SimpleTech Signature Mini Portable – A small, portable USB storage device with capacities up to 500GB that integrates with Fabrik’s online and local backup as well as the Joggle website.
SimpleTech Pro Drive – A line of external storage devices of varying sizes, data protection options and interfaces that come with free backup software and online backup.