I wouldn't call harddrives crude. They are probably one of the most precisely working mechanical devices in broad use. Sure I'd prefer an SSD drive anyday (if only because it's silent), but if I were to put the label "cool" on either SSDs or conventional HDDs it would be on the latter.
As for protein drives, this is from 2006/07 and it's still not here. Maybe people just don't like bugs in their computer