Buffalo adds Turbo USB to MiniStation / DriveStation external HDDs

Lately, it's been Buffalo's NAS lineup getting all the attention, but today the firm is showing a little affection for its MiniStation and DriveStation. The MiniStation, which is available in capacities of 80GB, 120GB, 160GB, and a quarter-terabyte join the more capacious DriveStation (arriving with 320GB, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB of space) in offering up the newfangled Turbo USB feature. Reportedly, this amenity "increases performance speed up to 60-percent faster than other USB hard drives on the market today," and benefits Windows and OS X users alike. The MiniStation ranges from $99.99 to $219.99 and should be available by the end of the month, but the DriveStation won't make its debut until early September when it rings up between $129.99 and $499.99.

[Via AkihabaraNews]

[Mile @ Aug 8th 2007 8:44AM]

Of course it's faster. Turbo is always faster!

[GuyJ86 @ Aug 8th 2007 9:00AM]

Why not add an e-sata port aswell, it would add alot more value to it.

[Solarcanine @ Aug 8th 2007 9:07AM]

Why would you buy a $219 250GB MiniStation when you can get a $129 320GB DriveStation?

Their pricing scheme baffles me.

[Jon Kelly @ Aug 8th 2007 10:10AM]

size & portability

[Adam Lunceford @ Aug 8th 2007 10:43AM]

Too bad Buffalo blows. Their Terrastations at least. Slow as crap.

[Alvin @ Aug 8th 2007 2:45PM]

Although this seems like a gimmick, there may certainly be ways that such a Turbo could increase performance over USB2. As we all know, there's pretty much no device that can saturate the (theoretical) maximum bandwidth of 480mbit/sec and, due to CPU overheads coming from the fact that, unlike 1394, USB2 is not a direct peer-peer connection so it's real-world speeds are actually worse than 1394. Any device that claims to increase the performance of USB2 is a step forward in my book!

Perhaps this device's chipset is optimized to synchronize the cluster read/writes off the HDD with the data block transmission through USB. Perhaps they've found a way to optimize overhead data and processing. Who knows...

A problem, however, that may exist is data corruption stemming from the additional optimization to boost speed. Hopefully this unit has top-notch error correction algorithms!