New Hard Drives May Boost Speed

Buffalo Technology has announced a range of portable hard drives that use a new technology the company says will significantly boost their performance in comparison to that of ordinary USB 2.0 products.

Aimed at small businesses, the new MiniStation product uses the company's proprietary TurboUSB technology to reduce file transfer overhead, thereby improving speed. The technology, which employs an optimized driver and controller chip combination, is being rolled out across all of the company's portable and stand-alone drives.

In every other respect, the MiniStation is just another well-designed and fairly cheap USB drive based on a standard 2.5 inch disk drive. Available in several capacities between 80GB and 300GB, the unit features a clever wrap-around USB cable, and a shock-resistant case. Prices range from £55 ($100 U.S.), including VAT, for the 80GB drive to £173 ($315 U.S.) for the 300GB version.

"We have developed the TurboUSB feature in response to consumer demand for faster and better performance from storage devices. The enhanced speed and functionality of the new MiniStation and DriveStation ranges enable users to back up and retrieve photos, videos and files faster than ever before," said Buffalo Technology's Gerardine Lynch.

No independent benchmarks of the TurboUSB feature exist, but the company has quoted performance improvements ranging from 16 percent to 37 percent for the 3.5-inch DriveStation drives, and 64 percent for the 2.5-inch MiniStation. Actual performance is likely to depend on the types and sizes of the files being transferred and on the drive formatting.

Buffalo Technology also announced that it will include the same technology in its DriveStation series of external 3.5-inch drives. These units include a power conservation feature for turning the drive on or off with the PC, and a basic backup utility with file encryption for security. Capacities extend from 240GB, which costs £67 ($122 U.S.), including VAT, to 1TB, priced at £304 ($553 U.S.).