Apr 19, 2011 14:26 GMT  ·  By

Hitachi may have been bought off by Western Digital, but its brand has by no means disappeared, as the company is still very much alive and kicking, as made obvious by the new lines of external hard disk drives.

New hard drives, both internal and external, are getting released regularly, even though platter-based solutions are losing market share overall.

In fact, HDDs have been decreasing in sales so quickly that certain IT players have decided to get out of the race altogether.

Case in point, not long after Western Digital bought off Hitachi, Samsung decided to have Seagate take its own HDD division off its hands, and Seagate agreed.

Nevertheless, acquired by WD or not, Hitachi is very much still in active duty, as proven by the Touro Pro product line.

It is composed of external HDDs for both desktops and notebooks, all of which can act as all-in-one solutions for file storing, easy access, backup and even cloud storage, ensuring a measure of protection as well.

There are four series, dubbed Touro Desk Drive, Touro Mobile Drive, Touro Desk Pro External and Touro Mobile Pro Portable. The Pro models have USB 3.0 and, while the others settle for 2.0.

“Unbound by convention, Hitachi GST was the first to blend personal storage with cloud backup. We’re liberating our customers from the limitations of today’s technology and giving them free reign about where they store and how they access their digital content,” said Mike Williams, general manager of Hitachi GST Branded Business Group.

“Our new intelligent storage products and services continue to redefine how we connect to our content - while providing data protection, simplicity and ease of use for just about anyone.”

The Touro Mobile line comes in 320 GB ($79.99), 500 GB ($99.99) and 750 GB ($119.99), while the 500 GB and 750 GB Touro Mobile Pro Portable sell for $109.99 and $129.99, respectively. They should already be available.

As for the Touro Desk and Desk Pro External, they are available in 1 TB, 2 TB and 3TB. The USB 2.0 models have prices of $99.99, $149.99 and $199.99, while the faster ones (Pro) will go for $129.99, $179.99 and $229.99. June is when they will sell.