14 DAY TRIAL // Quite a few external and/or portable storage devices already exist, so Buffalo figured it would distance itself form the so-called generic models by delivering an external, high-capacity solution with security features.
Buffalo is not the only company to cater to the needs of the external storage market recently.
Gigabyte already provided the Pure Rock portable HDD, while I-O Data created one with even greater capacity than the former and two USB ports instead of just one, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 that is.
To differentiate itself form the fold, Buffalo did not play the portability card, instead creating a high-capacity offering measuring 45 x 175 x 156 mm and weighing 1.1 kg.
It goes by the name of HDS-CXU2 and is an external hard disk drive unit whose capacity can be of 1 TB or 2 TB.
This means that they are more capacious than the above mentioned offers, but the lack of USB 3.0 may come as a sort of letdown, knowing how long it takes to copy multi-gigabyte filed via USB 2.0.
On the bright side, Buffalo definitely made sure to optimize the security aspect, among other things, by means of special software.
The first step was implementing AES 256-bit hardware encryption, as well as password authentication.
The company also included the SecureLock Manager software, which allows system administrators to adjust security levels.
The Buffalo HDS-CXU2 1 TB and 2 TB versions will start selling sometime during the month of February, 2011, for the prices of $203 and $280, respectively.
Both are bundled with the ecoManager software, which allows the products to save up to 71% of the power by reducing the rotary speed of the platters when the drive is idle.
What remains to be seen is how well they fare against all competing products once online listings finally show up.