14 DAY TRIAL // The USB 3.0 interface has picked up significantly over the past few months and it is no longer that big of a surprise to hear of new products being launched for the new interface. Still, surprising or not, a device capable of reaching a tenfold increase in speed, compared with its predecessors, is always a welcome sight, especially when said product is a storage unit with high capacities that can only be filled very slowly on USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 ports. In seeking to provide high-capacity drives with the benefits of the new standard, I-O Data has just released a new addition to the HDJ-UT external hard disk drive (HDD) lineup.
The new hard disk from the Japanese storage developer is not exactly optimized for portability, measuring 46 (W) x 223 (D) x 155 (H) mm and weighing 1.6kg, but it will still perform adequately as an auxiliary storage or backup solution. In fact, the storage unit makes up for its solid form factor through its substantial capacity of storing data. Specifically, the new drive has a capacity of no less than 2TB.
The USB 2.0 connection is significantly superior, in terms of speed, to the USB 1.1 interface, but even it cannot reach data-transfer rates high enough to complete large file transfers and backup operations in a truly timely fashion. This si exactly why the USB 3.0 interface has grown in popularity so rapidly, as it can increase the effectiveness tenfold.
According to I-O Data, the HDJ-UT can achieve data-transfer rates of 139MB/s. Of course, for the sake of convenience and universal compatibility, the new HDD will retain backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 and 1.1 ports, although, in such scenarios, the transfer speed will obviously be restricted.
The 2TB HDD should start selling during the latter half of April, at a price of roughly $315.