Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (which was just acquired by Western Digital) has announced the company’s first USB 3.0 external hard drives, the so-called Touro Mobile Pro Portable Drive and the Touro Desk Pro External Drive (the bigger one in the picture). What’s special about these devices is the personal cloud-based back up solution they come with.
In other words, you can store data on your hardware and online – if things go awry in either one of these “two levels of protection” (Hitachi), you don’t have to worry about losing valuable data. Both drives spin at 7,200rpm.
In the US, the Touro Mobile Pro Portable Drive are already available with 500GB ($109.99) or 750GB ($129.99) on board, while the desktop version will be launched in three versions in June: 1TB ($129.99), 2TB ($179.99) or 3TB ($229.99).
Included in these prices are 3GB of free storage space “in the cloud”, which is not really all that much (it costs $49 per year to upgrade 250GB).
Hitachi GST also plans to ship USB 2.0 versions, by the way (full details in the press release).