Just as I thought that Buffalo's devices could never get better than they are now, the company has announced yet another product to complete its portable storage offering. The new drive comes with 500GB of space and has arrived earlier than Seagate, Maxtor and Hitachi would have estimated.

Buffalo's half-a-terabyte disk is visually identical to the other products available in the MiniStation ultra-portable storage family. However, the HD-PS500U2 model, as it is called, managed to "compress" a considerable amount of storage, that can only be seen in a desktop case, into a miniature form factor, weighing just 200 grams.

The manufacturer has added quite some improvements to the PS500U2 disk. The drive's performance got a significant boost: the 4,200 rotations-per-minute drives have been replaced with faster, 5,200 RPM units which reflect in a data transfer rate gain of up to 64 percent.

The security aspect was not overlooked: given the fact that the Buffalo MiniStation PS500U2 disk is a portable solution that can always get lost, misplaced or even stolen, data security is a critical aspect, especially for corporate and enterprise users. Buffalo has implemented its proprietary Secure Lock Ware Encryption software suite for the Windows operating systems (2000, XP and Vista).

Backup operations are handled by the Memeo AutoBackup Software, that can perform regular system backup or scheduled backup and password-protect the data. Mac users have not been forgotten by Buffalo: the unit is fully compatible with Leopard's Time Machine.

The unit will be available from March and will come with an estimative price tag of about $407.