14 DAY TRIAL // The product in the photo looks nothing like an USB flash drive, in the traditional sense of small stick-like products, but that is what Buffalo claims the newly released DriveStation DDR is.
DriveStation DDR is a rather unusual USB-connected external memory device, for the simple reason that it isn't a normal HDD unit.
External hard disk drives are all well and good, but they don't really have very fast transfer speeds, even over SuperSpeed USB ports.
The DriveStation DDR can achieve rates of up to 408 MB/s though, 2.3 times better than USB 3.0 HDDs and 10 times faster (or more) than USB 2.0. Comparable to SSDs really.
Retailers like Amazon should have the product up for sale, for $139.99 / €139.99 in 2 TB capacity (HD-GD2.0U3) and $179.99 / €179.99 in 3 TB (HD-GD3.0U3).
"Buffalo has developed the perfect solution for consumers that demand fast storage performance, but don't want to sacrifice drive capacity," said Hajime Nakai, chief executive officer at Buffalo Technology (USA), Inc.
"We designed and built the DriveStation DDR to deliver the performance of an SSD coupled with up to three terabytes of storage, giving consumers the best of both technologies at an affordable price."
DriveStation DDR is a simple plug-and-play storage solution that caches data as it is transferred, hence the performance boost.
It was actually revealed back at CES 2013 (Consumer Electronics Show), but only now has reached stores.
It is packed with Buffalo Tools, a suite of optional software for Windows PCs. Among the programs, there are Buffalo's Backup Utility (backs up one or more computers on a single external HDD), Eco Manager, SecureLock (total data encryption) and RAMDISK (created a RAM disk on Windows PCs).
Finally, despite the software suite for Windows, the DriveStation DDR is compatible with Apple Mac systems as well, plus media players and gaming devices with USB 3.0 support.