TEAC intros multifunction portable hard drive

TEAC has introduced a new multifunction portable hard drive, although if by "multifunction" you're expecting TEAC to provide many functions, you may be somewhat disappointed. The primary function here is, of course, storage, with 40GB, 80GB, and 120GB options available to suit daily data diet. The multitude of other functions begins and ends with how you get all that data onto the drive, with not only a regular USB 2.0 interface at your disposal, but a built-in memory card reader to accommodate all your standard memory card formats as well. The idea being to reduce the number of memory cards you need to carry around with you to one, which you can offload directly onto the TEAC drive whenever it gets stuffed. What it won't let you do is view the photos or listen to the music you've got stored on it directly from the drive, a la other multi multifunction devices, but you can view the drive's status on its "large" LCD screen. It's not clear how much it'll cost yet, but TEAC says the the 40GB model will be available December 1st, with the 80GB and 120GB drives to follow at a later, unspecified date.

[Duncan @ Nov 30th 2006 6:19AM]

That looks so much like the Smartdisk Photobank - http://www.smartdisk.com/eweb/smartdiskus/www/staticpages/PhotoBank.asp

Somehow I think someone's bought branding rights...

[patrick @ Nov 30th 2006 7:20AM]

Question, Can you copy files from the hard drive to the memory cards? Because I have alot of pocket pc formatted movies that I could put on the drive then I could just add and replace them to me SD card to watch on the pocket pc.

[cricalix @ Nov 30th 2006 8:17AM]

If it's the same gadget as the one I reviewed, no. It only sucks data down from the readers, it doesn't push data to them. If you're interested, http://www.cricalix.net/archives/2006/08/06/smartdisk-photobank-review/ is what I wrote on it when I got mine.

[Dan @ Nov 30th 2006 7:22AM]

I agree that this is a disappointment for those of us waiting for a really convenient portable audio recorder. Most of the prices for flash audio recorders are ridiculous yet. Time for prices to come down. Listen up, Edirol, Zoom, etc.

[Dusan @ Nov 30th 2006 7:51AM]

Heh, I have an almost the same looking "Digimate II plus" for a few months now. And I can put in any portable disk I want, up to 120 GB. What I like about it - it's not expensive (50 EUR) and it works. So when I went for a 6 day trip to London with only 1 CF 256 MB I made almost 2 GB of photos.

Bad thing: I don't have time to separate good from bad photos. :-)))

[picantel @ Nov 30th 2006 8:57AM]

one word... Vosonic.

The new gen of Vosonic products not only give you upgradeable storage by using a standard 2.5" hard drive, they also play videos, mp3s, read text files, show EXIF data on stored images, and can accomodate a wide range of cards.

[Bob Baddeley @ Nov 30th 2006 8:46PM]

We made one of these for my senior project in college. We used an iPod battery and hard drive, built our own board, wrote all the software, and had USB 2.0 and CompactFlash support. This was in 2003-4, and we were just undergrads. http://classes.engr.oregonstate.edu/eecs/fall2003/ece441/groups/g15/index.htm

[aws910 @ Nov 30th 2006 12:12PM]

These kinds of things have been around for ages. The spec built for it is called USB OTG (on the go).