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| Verbatim’s 2.5" SmartDisk Portable Hard Drives Debut at CES Leveraging the resources gained with the purchase of SmartDisk's external hard drive assets in July 2007, Verbatim Americas launches a whole new line of SmartDisk 2.5" Portable Hard Drives. With the new elegantly designed HDs, consumers and businesses can immediately add 120, 160, 250, or 320GB of removable capacity without having to open their computer. The palm-sized external drives will be available for both Windows and Mac users later this month. The need for a fast, easy way to store, backup, share and transport data and multimedia files is fueling explosive growth in the worldwide removable storage industry. A growing number of consumers are using external hard drives to gain the additional storage they need for their photo, music and video files. Office workers are using the compact drives to transport work to their home systems and branch offices. As a result, IDC predicts more than 6 million external hard drives will be shipped in 2008, up 58 percent from the 3.8 million units shipped in 2006. Verbatim has enhanced the versatility of its 2.5" SmartDisk HDs by offering them with choice of a USB interface or a Combo USB/FireWire interface. With the Combo USB/FireWire interface, the device also becomes interoperable and files can be transferred between a Mac and a PC. The bus-powered, 5400 RPM drives deliver transfer speeds of up to 480MB per second (MB/sec.) when connected with USB 2.0 and up to 400MB/sec. for FireWire connections without requiring an AC power adapter. Once the SmartDisk portable HD is connected to a computer, it can be accessed and used like a computer hard drive. Users can drag files to the portable HD's icon to copy them, navigate to their HD in Open or Save dialog boxes, or delete files stored on the HD. Verbatim 2.5" SmartDisk Portable HDs support the "Time Machine" backup feature in Mac OS X Leopard. Included in the USB-only models is CMS' BounceBack Express backup software, an easy-to-use backup utility that incorporates scheduling, backup sets, automatic launch options and a quick restore feature. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Computing News :: home page |