The trickle of USB 3.0 devices hitting the market is steadily increasing and will no doubt be a flood before too long. Portable hard drives are likely to be big sellers and Samsung is helping to get the ball rolling by announcing its new 2.5-inch external HDD, the S2 Portable 3.0. The drive features an on-board SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface and a 7200RPM spindle speed to slash the time spent watching a progress bar crawl across the screen when moving files.
The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface offers a maximum transfer rate of 5 gigabits per second (Gbps) compared to the 480 megabits per second (Mbps) of USB 2.0. In addition, the 7200RPM rotation speed delivers high performance, while Samsung’s low vibration Dynamic Balancing technology increases drive stability while SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies keep the drives quiet.
In addition to speed increases, the on-board USB technology reduces the size of the hard disk casing and delivers reduced power consumption. The new external hard drive also features a preloaded software suite including Samsung Auto Backup, SecretZone and SafetyKey for data encryption and password protection.
The S2 Portable 3.0 comes in 320GB and 640GB capacities with shipments to countries in the European Union commencing this month. Samsung is yet to release pricing or other market release dates.