It's fine to
announce USB 3.0 gear, but it's another thing entirely to actually put it up for retail. Buffalo's making the boast today that its HD-HU3 series of USB 3.0 hard disks will be the "world's first!!" to ship. Since a USB 3.0 device is pointless without a controller to support it, Buffalo will also make NEC's ¥5,300 (about $60) IFC-PCIE2U3 2-port PCI Expressx1 host controller available with its hard drives when they ship late October in Japan, almost a month before Freecom's disks hit the market. The 1TB and 1.5TB drives will cost ¥20,000 (about $225) and ¥25,300 (about $284), respectively, with a ¥46,600 (about $523) 2TB disk coming sometime later. Imagine it, soon you'll be able to take advantage of those
USB 3.0 cables you bought back in April. Controller after the break.
[Via
Engadget Japanese]
posted Oct 7th 2009 4:38AM
Looks shiny
id actually love to get it to use with my LAPTOP
alas, knowing the North American market, the controllers for lappies will come here in mid April >.>
sexy little finger print magnet, useless for me due to the amount mine moves around and the cleaning would become a major hassle.
after Intel's Light Peak announcement, I'm less excited about USB3.0
why? usb3 is right around the corner and light peak is no where in sight...
incoming posts about how grandma or that joe drunk ass with a six pack can't understand light peak.
theres light at the end of the corridor
I guess it's because having a glimpse of what's to come, makes an otherwise important launch less exciting. And besides, Light Peak is closer than you might think. They think its components will be ready to ship in 2010. Wide adoption should follow shortly I suspect, assuming all goes well and the costs are as predicted and the industry is willing to accept yet another communication interface, in such a short time.
I don't forsee Lightpeak taking off for at LEAST 2 years, probably a lot longer though. The idea is definately good especially for future tech, but currently it's not practical at this time. Why?
Even if everything gets switched to LightPeak, how many USB devices are out there?
Don't even try to fire back "just buy a USB to Lightpeak adapter for each device". We all know how much people loathe stupidplug-to-3.5mm headphone adapters on cell phones.
Well if Apple and Intel are working together I think we could see the technology a lot sooner than typical. Apple is the kind of company to release technology that they believe is better regardless of whether the industry is ready. You will probably see Light Peak as the sole port on the 2010 Mac range with absolutely no supporting peripherals... the infrastructure will follow.
Which is the very definition of the Reality Distortion Field. Don't buy into the idiocy.
@JOSH
You mean like Apple backing display port which is it is now the defacto display plug standard, right? Oh wait, display port is hardly used by most of the industry - at all. While 95%+/- of current production display devices have HDMI, Apple goes for the obscure display port.Or while Blu-Ray gets wide acceptance as a storage medium, Apple sees it as a "bag of hurt" (which with Sony's Apple-esque control on the licensing aspect, I can kind of understand, though hes hurting possible sales of Pixar & Disney movies), which is nothing new on Apples part. They changed their mini-DVI plug with each redesign so you had to buy a new adapter. Hopefully Apple won't also see USB3 as a "bag of hurt" or I know a lot of video jockeys & storage freaks who will start seeing Apple as a "bag of a**".
I can't wait to use LightPeak on my SED TV!
They'll be in stores soon.
No, really.
I don't like xbox360 like casings.
all those with USB 3.0 ports, raise your hand....
"Buffalo will also make NEC's ¥5,300 (about $60) IFC-PCIE2U3 2-port PCI Expressx1 host controller available with its hard drives when they ship"
Buffalo kicks ass, good on them. They've always had high quality parts for good prices.
And you haven't really loved an animal till you've loved a buffalo (at least that's what my late unlce in montana always used to say).
Nice! Now I can transfer data slightly faster over a pipe that was never fully used anyway!
Im tired of all the qualifications... world's first to patent; world's first to manufacture; to ship; to ship in a green box; to ship in a green box that really mean green. WTF?!
Does it make a difference? Especially at this stage in the game w/ no USB 3.0 hosts? Making a big deal of buying this would only prove someone to be a world's first fool who bought tires first and waited around for a car.
It's backward compatible so if you need a new storage drive, why not get the newer technology? Further, light speed will use fiber optic connection cables which will make it expensive in the beginning. I will gladly jump to USB 3.0 if a 10 minute backup can realistically be done in 2.5 minutes!
Can anyone give me (and probably others like me) a quick rundown of whether USB 3.0 is even needed for regular external hard drives? Basically, a followup to what Lazarpandar stated.
Is there going to be any considerable performance gains for external non-SSD hard drives switching from 2.0 to 3.0? At least initially?
>> "Is there going to be any considerable performance gains for external non-SSD hard drives switching from 2.0 to 3.0? At least initially?"
Maybe you'll finally be able to break free of the normal 30-40MB/s with USB 2.0
USB 2.0 is rated at 60MB/s... but it never gets there...
Okay, I figured there had to be *some* kind of gain possible, being that Firewire800 exists at all in the market.
Just kept seeing posts that were like "USB 2.0 isn't fully used" and wasn't quite sure what that meant.
The interface is 10x faster than 2.0 so the 7200 RPM and Raptors should really perform. Right now though, these early drives will carry a bit of a premium and wont be fully utilized. Once the drives and USB hosts/ adapters are widespread, lower prices will make it all worth it.
esata is fine for me
Exactly what I was thinking, being that its a 3.5" drive its probably going to need a wall wart to power it anyway. eSATA should be plenty fast enough, no need for a new controller and its significantly cheaper to just buy a 1TB or 1.5TB drive and an eSATA enclosure and call it a day. Its also a lot cheaper to buy SATA to eSATA backplanes if you need to share the drive with multiple machines. $225 or $284 for a $90 to $120 drive in a shiny case with a new interface, no thanks.
you won't see any difference. the drives are not fast enough anyway. this is more to push USB 3.0 which of course will be for more than just ext HDDs. it will pretty much make eSATA useless for most people though and there are a lot more USB 2 ext HDDs than eSATA ones, so that is the market they are aiming for.
So they shipped the first USB 3.0 hard drive case with a lowend OEM drive in it. Grats
I'll be really pissed if I get an RROD on this thing.
Am i the only one that think the xbox 360 should look like this
Wow, time for the XBOX 720 already? What will this thing have? Red Bar of Death?
I am fed up with this world's first xxxx product press release.
Is this thing bug free and compatible with most hard drives and motherboards NOW?
That's an epic fail...why buy 1 2TB for $523 when you can get 2 1TB's for $450?
Everything should just run over HDMI now, that way I wouldn't have to pack around a dozen cables when I make the trek to the relatives' houses on holidays.
Pay no attention to this post. It means nothing.
I guess I don't see the point of a USB 3.0 Hard Drive. SATA is the native connection on the drive itself, wouldn't eSATA be the fastest connection? Why convert SATA to USB 3.0 if you can just use eSATA?
How is USB 3.0 better than eSATA specifically for a external HDD? I know its obviously useful for other high bandwidth devices like HD digicams,USB crossover cables etc.
looks like a PS3 and an xbox got it on when everyone went to bed.
DisplayPort allows higher resolutions than HDMI. Think about it this way, HDMI and DVI exist simultaneously. HDMI and DisplayPort can too.