Hasta La Gadget!

Western Digital’s kicking off the expected flood of USB 3.0 announcements here at CES with the new My Book 3.0 series. The 1TB version of the SuperSpeed drive is actually available now for $179, or $199 in a kit with a USB 3.0 adapter card, while a 2TB version will hit next week. That’s actually not a terrible deal if you’re into futureproofing, since USB 3.0 is backwards-compatible with USB 2.0 — you could theoretically use this drive with both your current machine and your next one. Or you could just keep buying cheap storage for the thrill of it. We won’t judge you.

Western Digital My Book 3.0 goes SuperSpeed USB originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, Brando — how we do love thee. Be it random accessories we don’t need at all or legitimate peripherals that make our lives all that much easier, you’re always there — steadfastly waiting for us to fall in love over and over again. Mushiness aside, the outfit’s new USB 3.0-to-SATA adapter is indeed one of those remarkably useful devices, enabling any old SATA hard drive to be accessed externally at USB 3.0 speeds. Essentially, this is the pocket-friendly version of Sharkoon’s latest SATA QuickPort, but rather than forcing you to carry around a dock, this simple dongle travels easy and plugs directly into the port-laden side of your spare HDD. Granted, you’ll need a USB 3.0-enabled PC or expansion card in order to take advantage of the additional speed, but for $48, this looks to be an excellent excuse to get that dusty, unused drive of yours back into service.

Brando’s USB 3.0-to-SATA adapter gives any old HDD those SuperSpeed powers originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hey Brando! You’re awesome for being your usual self — $49 isn’t too bad for this next-gen product (also the first USB 3.0 hard drive enclosure sans drive we’ve seen), and it doesn’t burn our eyes either. Now, maybe those drive manufacturers can start sorting out those extortionate SSD prices? We’ve seen the numbers and not even the 7200rpm hard drives have made it over half the theoretical speed of USB 2.0, let alone reaching ten times that on 3.0. Still, there’s no harm in making the early jump — it is backward compatible after all, and if you don’t mind paying for juice you can’t use, who are we to stop you?

Brando begins deluge of anonymous USB 3.0 hard drive enclosures originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No monkeys this time, but LaCie has just announced new storage option that should get folks plenty excited on its own: a new dual-drive 2Big USB 3.0 RAID drive developed in partnership with Symwave. As you’ve no doubt been able to surmise by now, this thing is big and fast, with it able to support up to 4TB of storage, and provide a peak burst read transfer speed of 275MB/s thanks to a new dual SATA and RAID bridge controller developed by Symwave. Unfortunately, there’s still no indication of a price, and LaCie isn’t getting any more specific than “early 2010” in terms of a release date. It is promising to show off the drive at CES next month though, and hopefully offer a few more details about it as well.

LaCie and Symwave announce 2Big USB 3.0 dual-drive RAID originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Been fretting over the upcoming slew of USB 3.0 devices and your relatively new laptop’s inability to exploit their full speed? Well this isn’t going to help you much, but it’s a great example of why you should shop with a careful eye and preferably from reputable stores. British e-tailer StarTech.com (no, we haven’t heard of them before either) is now offering an ExpressCard-based USB 3.0 adapter for £39 (about $64), which seems a bargain considering the promised 5Gbps transfer speeds and general bragging rights associated with having SuperSpeed. But here’s the rub: while USB 3.0 certainly supports such speeds, the ExpressCard 1.0 device in question doesn’t. In fact, you’ll be limited to a tenth half the speed the 3.0 controller onboard is capable of, leaving us to question what the exact point of this device really is. Any ideas?

Update: We’ve double-checked the specs and this card can in fact give you 2.5Gbps throughput, which isn’t quite so terrible, but still isn’t the full USB 3.0 spec which is lauded on their sales page.

USB 3.0 ExpressCard adapter promises more than it can deliver originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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