Pre CES 2007 coverage - Irvine (CA) - Toshiba's storage division announced today that it is working on its entry into the portable storage market, with a line of portable USB external hard drives set for release in the spring of this year.

The storage division of Toshiba will be launching portable hard drives with capacities of 100 GB, 120 GB, and 160 GB, each of which will size up at 2.5 inches.

With perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) and smaller hard drives making waves in 2006, personal storage will be a hot issue this year. "In 2006, more hard disk drive terabytes shipped into personal storage devices worldwide than in the enterprise storage market. This important inflection point exemplifies the critical need for companies to offer reliable and easy-to-use backup solutions that will help the masses protect and preserve their digital memories," said IDC storage analyst Dave Reinsel in Toshiba's press release.

Toshiba's drives will come in packages with NTI Shadow software, a back-up utility that automatically saves computer files to the external device. It will be available in the spring from about $140.