After more than two decades as a leader in the world of portable data storage, Micro-Solutions Inc. of DeKalb, Illinois - creator of the popular Backpack line of portable hard drives - has closed its doors.
Calls to the main number at the company's DeKalb headquarters were greeted by a recorded message saying the company "is no longer in business," and a man who answered the technical support line said he was one of only two employees left at the company.
The technical support representative, who refused to give his name, said that Micro-Solutions stopped shipping products two months ago, and has let go most of its more than 100 employees. He said the company would be providing technical support for any of its products that are under warranty until the end of this year.
Micro-Solutions was founded by Ron Proesel and Jack Moloney in 1980. According to the company's website, it has been in business for more than 20 years, and launched its Backpack line of hard drives in 1990. It reportedly holds two U.S. patents and one Canadian patent on parallel-port mass storage technology.
One of the company's more recent models of portable hard drive, the Lockbox, has a built-in fingerprint reader which locks the data on the drive so that it can only be accessed by a single person.