14 DAY TRIAL // Because the amount of data that has to be securely stored and moved around increases every year, the mobile hard disk drive market is blooming and after years of developing and perfecting features like data transfer speed, storage capacities and shock resistance, most hardware manufacturers that are active on the portable storage devices market are focusing on design and aesthetic problems now.
Formac announced a new family of portable storage devices in the form of a mini disk range that offers "storage portabillity,flexibility and performance" according to the company's Web page. The portable hard disk drives are available in two colors, white and black, and they are packed in a durable and slick casing that features an integrated shock absorber based on a suspension system. The suspension system is designed to protect the internal hard disk drive from accidental falls and mechanical shocks that can shorten the life of the storage system. Optionally, a Tucano high quality sleeve for protecting the drive can be purchased.
Formac's Disk Mini Portable Drive comes in several sizes, having storage capacities between 80GB, that are perfect for home use, and 160GB that are better suited for back ups and document portability. All disks from the Formac's mini disk series come with a high data speed port that is 100 percent compliant with the USB version 2.0 standard that is also used in order to provide power to the drive so no external power supply is needed. Because all needed power is delivered through the USB port that doubles as a data transferring interface, Formac's mini disk series is perfect for use with laptops and other mobile computing devices where the presence of an auxiliary power supply is problematic.
Because of the fast hard disk drive and the USB version 2.0 compliance, Formac's mini disk series feature transfer rates of up to 480Mbits per second. The internal hard disk drive comes with a cache size of 8MB and 5400rpm or in the case of the soon to come 200GB device, a rotational speed of 4200rpm.