Buffalo Launches “First” USB 3.0 External Hard Drive

Yesterday, I posted news about OCZ’s upcoming USB 3.0-based SSD drives, and there, I mentioned that USB 3.0 external storage didn’t quite exist yet at the consumer level. Well, I can put my foot where my mouth is, because I stumbled on a release that occurred just two days ago that proves me wrong. Buffalo, known for its storage and networking products, released a USB 3.0 external hard drive called the “DriveStation”.

The press release issued by the company is a little misleading, as it states that the device is capable of “delivering transfer rates up to 625 MB per second“, which might be true, but, no one is going to see that kind of speed from the device until something major happens in the storage market. Even the fastest consumer SSDs on the market barely hit half of the 625 MB rated speeds. Unfortunately, the press release doesn’t state the real speeds at all.

The product page does, however, and it’s just what we’d expect: “up to 130MB/s“. That’s of course the typical speeds we’d expect to see from our standard mechanical desktop drives, and it’s also the same speeds we’d see if we were using an eSATA external enclosure. So what’s the benefit of USB 3.0? From what I can tell, a power adapter isn’t required, as the USB port itself provides enough juice. I can’t verify that for certain, but I’ve been unable to find contradicting information anywhere.

Earlier this month, it became known that Intel wasn’t planning to include native support for either USB 3.0 or S-ATA 3.0 in its chipset until 2011, and that shocked a lot of people, especially since Intel is a premium supporter of such technologies. Shortly after that post, I questioned an Intel employee about the lack of support, and the response simply came down to the lack of a real need right now. What we’re seeing from either technology at this point in time are rather minor gains in the grand scheme, so in that regard, there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason to run out and pick up a motherboard with support. for either, or both But on the other hand, with companies like OCZ pushing ultra-fast storage on USB 3.0, it may experience a quicker adoption than we might think.

“Innovation has always been Buffalo Technology’s core value and the new DriveStation HD-HXU3 combines both USB 3.0 performance, and the latest hard disk technology to give consumers the fastest, and most reliable solution on the market,” said Ralph Spagnola, vice president of sales at Buffalo Technology. “The DriveStation HD-HXU3 delivers on Buffalo’s ongoing commitment in delivering high quality, robust storage solutions to meet the high demands of today’s consumers.”