14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that the large collection of portable storage devices currently available worldwide has just grown, what with Buffalo apparently putting its MiniStation 3.0 series through a died.
When looking at the recent events unfolding on the HDD market, one can't say that the storage industry has been neglected.
Although the new chipsets and processors, like the AMD Fusion A-Series Llano APUs, have been getting most of the attention, new HDDs and the like have definitely not gone by unnoticed.
Most recently, I-O Data and Western Digital both came forth and revealed either a new set of hard drives or an enclosure for existing storage units.
Now, Buffalo is joining the bandwagon with a new version of a high-capacity MiniStation 3.0 portable HDD, one that is even more easy to carry around than before (the original series has actually been around ever since back in February, 2011).
What the company did was basically rebuild the HDD in order for it to measure 14mm in thickness instead of 17mm.
The size is particularly relevant because the product has a storage space of 1 TB, something that isn't particularly common even in regular drives, whether for desktops or notebooks.
The other asset that gives the product appeal is the support for the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface standard, which has a theoretical maximum throughput of 5 Gbps.
In other words, although the newcomer won't really work that fast, it will, nonetheless, operate quickly enough that even multi-gigabyte files will transfer smoothly to and from the platters.
Of course, its nature also makes the Buffalo MiniStation 3.0 very well suited for backup tasks, especially with the bundled software for backup and encryption, not to mention power saving (Eco Manager).
With a price of $195, the drive should start shipping before the end of the month (June, 2011).