We've seen a unique range of TV moms over the years, from the snarky Roseanne to the smart Angela Bower to the happy-go-lucky Norma Arnold.

So, in honor of all the things mothers do for us—and in the spirit of Mother's Day—TiVo released its results of an independent survey that ranked the top twenty TV moms of all time.

The survey asked TV fans to rank their favorite five TV moms from a list of twenty past and present stars. A TiVo panel of TV experts tallied the results, with a clear winner: The Cosby Show's Clair Huxtable, with 58 percent of the votes.

"First of all, she was a real human being. She was a devoted wife and mother with a great sense of humor and a definite awareness of her own self," said Phylicia Rashad, who played Clair. "People look to the mother as the embodiment of the family. She was the mother that children love, that husbands adore, and that women want to be."

Check out who else made the list, after the jump.

Here at PC Magazine, we get a lot of weird stuff in the mail. Just this morning, someone sent me a package with stink-free sweat socks and a box of Croatian chocolates. Still, so far as I know, no one has ever sent us a purposefully destroyed hard drive before. In a place where we take our devices' health seriously, it's a pretty good way to get our attention. On top of the drive was a transparent piece of plastic labeled, "Visual Verification of Destruction."

The package came from eDR Solutions, maker of the Hard Drive Crusher (HDC-V), a device that destroys your hard drive to help protect you from possible identity theft once you toss your PC out. The HDC-V drills a hole through your drive's spindle, "physically creat[ing] ripples in the platter making it impossible to recover data."

The Crusher weighs about 80 pounds and can destroy a disc in about 10 seconds, so up to 60 disks in an hour. The HDC-V uses a standard wall outlet and can crush over 100,000 disks without having to be serviced, according to eDR. It runs $11,500--pricey, but not bad compared to the potential cost of identity theft. It's also a potentially endless source of crusheriffic fun.

Storage manufacturer LaCie announced this morning the release of a new 500GB rugged hard drive, the company's "largest capacity single-disk mobile product." The simply named LaCie Rugged Hard Disk is a Hitachi Travelstar 5K500, 2.5-inch disk enclosed within a casing made of rubber bumpers, with internal anti-shock absorbers and shock-resistant metal. It's designed by company favorite Neil Poulton.

External hard drives are a dime a dozen these days, so it's tough to come up with an innovative feature to help you stand out from the crowd. Buffalo's three new DriveStation Combo4s -- the 320GB HD-HS320Q for $149, the 500GB HD-HS500Q for $189, or the 1-terabyte HD-HS1.0TQ for $349 -- all sport what are now considered the standard four interfaces: USB 2.0, FireWire 400/800, and eSATA. It's worth noting that eSATA is still somewhat uncommon, but dramatically less so than a year ago.

The hook here is Buffalo's "TurboUSB" software. I'm not clear on exactly how it works (compression? tweaking of USB packets?) but the company says it delivers a 20 percent performance boost when transferring files via the USB 2.0 interface. (Don't bother searching the Buffalo Web site; at press time, the explanation was all in Latin.)

Other features include a fanless heat sink for quiet operation, and SecureLockWare, which offers file and folder encryption for Windows users through 256-bit AES encryption technology. If that's important, give this a look.

Here's the sort of milestone that I can really get behind: Computer storage company Seagate announced today that it has shipped its billionth hard drive. Providing a bit of context, the company notes that that amount is roughly equivalent to 79 million terabytes, which should give you enough space to store, say 158 billion hours of video or 1.2 trillion hours of music--nearly enough for your entire MP3 collection. Nearly.

Seagate shipped its first drive back in 1979. The ST506 was around 5 pounds, cost $1,500, and stored a whopping 5MB, at a cost of $300 per MB. These days, the company notes, the price is closer for a terabyte drive is closer to $0.00022 per MB.

While it took nearly three decades to ship that first billion, the company said that it expects to ship the second billion within the next five years. The company is currently shipping 111,600 TB a day--roughly the equivalent of 1TB a second.

Another Monday morning, another "world's [-]est gadget." Today it's accessory manufacturer Western Digital, which is laying claim to "the world's fastest SATA hard drive." The company's new 10,000-rpm WD VelociRaptor drives boast a 35-percent performance increase over the company's previous models. The 2.5-inch drives offer 300GB of storage and a built-in heat sink.

"We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed," said vice president and general manager of the company's enterprise and business unit, Tom McDorman. "The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market."

The drives will be available for Alienware's ALX systems by the end of the month. In mid-May, the drives will be available through Western Digital's site for $299.99.

Joining a long, storied tradition of corporate shenanigans, Samsung group chairman Lee Kun-hee was indicted today on billions of dollars worth of tax-evasion charges and breach of trust, the later stemming from long standing accusations of stock manipulation. Nine other execs from the company were indicted on related charges as well, though no one has been arrested thus far.

"Samsung would like to apologize for causing concerns," said one of the company's execs, Lee Soon-dong, in a statement. "Taking this special prosecution investigation as a new starting point, Samsung is preparing reform plans, based on advice from various sectors of our society."

According to The New York Times, the company is set to hold a press conference on the matter next week.

If you're a tech lover like me--and since you're reading a gadget guide by geeks, for geeks, you probably are--then it's a safe bet that you've been carrying around a hoopty too. I've carried the same USB thumbdrive on my keychain for about two years now. The cap doesn't fit, the plastic is worn down, and the design? It's basically a stick. But still, it's functional, and 2GB seemed large (well large enough, anyway), so I didn't give two thoughts about upgrading it.

Until I saw the new hotness from Transcend, anyway.

The Transcend JetFlash V90c packs 4GB of flash goodness into a tiny metal body barely bigger than the first joint of your thumb. The memory modules themselves are hidden within the body of the drive, and fold out easily enough. But it's the distinctive swirly pattern that really caught my eye--and that of the judges behind the Red Dot Design Awards, who just awarded Transcend for making such a neat device.

Still not sold? Transcend sells these things online for just $27 bucks. Isn't it time you upgraded too?

IT and enterprise solution provider EMC Corporation today finalized an agreement to acquire consumer and SMB storage device manufacturer Iomega for approximately $213 million.

"Iomega will play a key role in EMC's strategy to expand our information storage and management capabilities deeper into the high-growth consumer and small business markets," EMC president, chairman, and CEO, Joe Tucci said in a statement. "In addition to industry-leading products and a household consumer brand, Iomega brings to EMC a deep knowledge of and established business practices for servicing consumers and small businesses. Iomega and EMC represent a powerful combination that ultimately will benefit these customers through the protection, security and simplified management of their rapidly growing information."

The acquisition, which is set to be completed in Q2 2008, will put Iomega's existing business at the center of EMC's new consumer/SMB divition, set to be led by Iomega's CEO, Jonathan Huberman.

NAS (network attached storage) devices are becoming more popular and competition for home-oriented NAS boxes are becoming more refined. Whether you're looking for a small device to store your home media on or a heavy-duty beast that can meet your growing business' needs, there's a NAS box for you—even if you're using a Mac. Check out the best NAS devices PC Magazine has recently reviewed in this roundup.

Networking hardware manufacturer Buffalo today announced the launch of their new LinkStation Mini, a "palm-sized" 1.1 pound network attached storage (NAS) device.

The 1TB Mini features a dual drive configuration offering data redundancy via RAID 1. The device also offers an included DLNA server provided by TwonkyVision that lets users stream media files through compatible players.

The LinkStation Mini ships with Buffalo's proprietary Web Access feature, letting users access content on the drive from anywhere, using a standard Web browser, while the Remote Power feature makes it possible to turn on the device from afar using the Navigator software bundled with the unit.

Also included are an extra USB port for additional hard drives or printers, 0/100/1000Mbps auto sensing Ethernet port, Two 5,400RPM 2.5 inch notebook drives, and Support for RAID 0 and RAID 1.

The LinkStation Mini will be available in May for $699. A 500GB version of the drive will be offered shortly thereafter.

LaCie introduced yesterday a new triple interface hard disk. Created by Scottish product designer Neil Poulton, the sleek black disk is "the first LaCie product to bring eSATA connectivity to a consumer level product," according the to the company, combining that interface with USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 ports.

Available in 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB models, the new hard disk is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Mac OS X 10.3 and higher. The drives will be available for a suggested starting price of $149.99, joining its less expansive USB-only counterparts ($109.99), which were announced late last year.

The 500GB version is available today, via LaCie's site. The device ships with a two year warranty.

I'd never heard of Super Talent--and believe me, with a name like that, I would almost certainly remember if I had--but I spoke with our lead desktop analyst, Joel Santo-Domingo, and he vouched for its validity, well, he vouched for the fact that they'd been around for a while (even if he hadn't heard that name in some time), which should account for something, right? The San Jose-based company is in the component business, and has recently been focusing on world of flash-based hard drives.

Today Super Talent announced the production of what they claim to be the "world's slimmest" 256GB solid state drive (SSD), surely a good piece of news for those eagerly awaiting the days that flash drives will rival spinning hard drives for capacity. The FSD56GC25H crams all of those gigs into 12.5mm, which, according to the company, is 40 percent thinner than its nearest rival.

The company is also touting the drive's ruggedness which supports up to 1600G shocks and 16G vibrations. "We designed this drive for applications that need rugged and reliable storage in a very compact form factor. This is the world's smallest and thinnest 256GB SSD," said the company's marketing director, Joe James. "This product underscores our leadership in high density SSDs and demonstrates the technical capabilities of our Silicon Valley engineering team."

Since Super Talent sells directly to OEMs, no pricing was available.

Don't blame Plextor -- they obviously began developing both the PX-B920SA and PX-B300SA PC drives well before Toshiba decided to pull the plug on HD DVD. So the fact that both drives can play back HD DVD and Blu-ray discs should be taken as a bonus, albeit a pricey one: the PX-B920SA and PX-B300SA will ship in late March for $599.99 and $499.99, respectively.

Specs after the jump.

Fujitsu said Monday that it would begin shipping a 320-Gbyte laptop hard disk drive in the second quarter.

The 2.5-inch MHZ2 BJ series will spin at 7,200 RPM, and include a 3.0-Gbit/s SATA interface. The drive consumes 2.3 watts while reading and writing, and 0.8 watts while sitting idle. Performance-wise, the drive requires an average seek time of about 10.5 to 12.5 milliseconds.

Just for comparison's sake, an older 32-Gbyte Samsung MCAQE32G5APP-0XA00 (selected mainly because it was ten times smaller in terms of capacity) solid-state drive consumes 0.5 watts while actively reading or writing, and 0.1 watts at idle. Since it's solid state storage, there really isn't measurable latency, as there is no time needed for the head to traverse the media.

Samsung charges $499 for its drive. Fujitsu hasn't announced a price for the MHZ2 BJ series, but a similar 320-Gbyte Toshiba MK3252GSX (that only spins at 5,400 RPM) is priced at $169. So there are your tradeoffs.