First Look at Soft Drive, a Portable Hard Drive with a Fungus-Based Shell

Photo credit: Sree Krishna Pillarisetti
The Soft Drive, a portable USB storage device, has a truly unique claim to fame: its protective shell is made not of plastic or metal, but of a mixture of mycelium, an underground network of fungal threads, and hemp fibers, with a bioplastic made from waste called polylactic acid blended in. Designer Sree Krishna Pillarisetti created the concept for Soft Drive as his MFA thesis project while studying at Parsons School of Design, which is part of The New School.

When it comes to actual data storage, the Soft Drive is quite simple, as in a normal memory card linked with a heat sink and a collection of basic circuits that handle the heavy lifting of storing and processing information, just like any other USB stick. Users simply connect in and utilize the soft drive to transfer files, write data, or read it back as they are accustomed to.

That ‘ordinary’ hardware inside is coated in an amazing protective shell, or, more specifically, a mycelium shell that compresses with impact and acts as a shock absorber, ensuring that the data inside remains safe even if its owner drops it and the shell is beaten. Don’t worry, the data is still safely kept on the internal card, and the gentle Drive gets gentle cushioning from the outside.

Pillarisetti refers to his idea as a regenerative memory storage device, which pretty much sums up its eco-friendliness. When its useful life is up, the shell decomposes naturally and is washed back into the earth, leaving no nasty electrical waste behind. If you look closely at the Soft Drive, you’ll note that the translucent case allows you to see the wispy fibrous texture of the mycelium and hemp combination, which is a significant change from the typical sleek, homogeneous design of most electrical devices. To make it even more portable. Pillarisetti attached a woven lanyard to one end, transforming the drive into something you can easily wear or throw in a bag and go.

Recently, there have been some efforts with integrating fungal networks in electronics to build “memory elements” that retain information using fungus’ small electrical responses. The Soft Drive takes a radically different approach, using tried-and-true flash memory inside and relying on nature for safety. The final outcome has a really purposeful, down-to-earth feel to it, like a reminder that data used to be something you could handle, drop, and even compost.
[Source]