External Optical Drive from I-O Data Writes BDXL Disks

Those that were wondering how long it would take for more BDXL drives to show up need wait no longer, as a certain company known as I-O Data has come to challenge Buffalo with an external solution of this very sort.

For those that do not know, some months ago, the Blu-ray Disk Association, BDA for short, came up with the long awaited standard for very high-capacity disks.

Basically, through special scribing methods and layers, it became possible to create disks with 100 GB and even 128 GB of storage space.

When this happened, game makers for the PS3 console got a lot of ground to work with, so they could make better and more graphically-detailed titles. Also, it became easier to store files outside of a PC as well.

The only snag was that the number of drive units capable of writing on such disks was low, and they all were very expensive.

The second problem has yet to be solved, and probably will take a while, considering that regular Blu-ray disks are still fairly expensive themselves, as are ODDs of that kind.

On the other hand, BDXL writers are slowly getting more widely available, especially now that not just Buffalo, but also I-O Data have created portable solutions.

Speaking of I-O Data, its BDXL external drive, mostly intended for laptops (being easy to carry around and all) only now debuted.  

It can reach speeds of 4x for 100 GB and 128 GB disks and utilizes the USB 2.0 interface standard. Of course, to this is added support for regular Blu-ray disks, as well as DVDs and CDs. After all, backwards compatibility is always a must.  

The price is 23,205 JPY, which is the equivalent of roughly US $284. Its weight is of 620 grams, while the physical size is 137 (W) x 154 (D) x 20 (H) mm.