Hasta La Gadget!

You won’t find USB 3.0 on consumer desktops and laptops just yet, but that’s not keeping a number of portable hard drive manufacturers from releasing portable drives that make use of the new high-speed spec. Samsung is the latest company to join the crowd, and recently announced the new Samsung S2 Portable 3.0, their first portable hard drive to support USB 3.0. The drive also features a 7,200 RPM hard drive inside the enclosure, which means that short of enterprise-level hard drives, the S2 Portable 3.0 is probably one of the fastest external hard drives on the market, not just internally, but in terms of data transfer.

The Samsung S2 Portable 3.0 will be available in both 320GB and 640GB versions, and while Samsung doesn’t explicitly mention that it will be backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices, it’s difficult to imagine that it won’t be. Samsung is making the drive available in the European Union this month, with North American customers following soon after.