PQI Releases Zippy Fast 2.5 inch USB 3.0 HDD

By Kevin Parrish
published

It's the world's first 2.5-inch portable drive using USB 3.0.

Last week PQI said that it launched the world's first 2.5-inch portable hard drive using USB 3.0 technology, the H566. With a theoretical bandwidth of 5Gbps and a rather small form factor, this new portable drive should be the ideal solution for pocketing loads of multimedia and data rather quickly from the office, from the home, from unsuspecting game developers, or from your friend's dark basement.

"Since H566 began mass production last week, it has already resulted in a volume of inquiries from domestic and international buyers, making it the first USB 3.0 device with significant sales volume," the company said. "PQI’s H566 not only have spectacular bandwidth of USB 3.0, its 2.5-inch hard drive dimensions is convenient to carry and has aesthetic looks, making it the new IT toy you just got to have!"

PQI is offering the portable drive in three flavors: 320GB, 500GB, and 640GB. The drives measure around 5 x 3.25 x 0.67-inches, and also come packed with Ur Fortress security software, classified data protection, and personal data privacy. The H566 is compatible with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, and Mac OS X 10.1, and even sports a sleek and sexy metallic silver casing that won't give it such a geeky look.

Currently prices are unavailable, as the H566 hasn't hit NewEgg as of the writing. Still, other PQI products can be found on NewEgg by heading here (opens in new tab).

Kevin Parrish
12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • RazberyBandit
    If only we were all using USB 3.0 and could actually make use of it's speed potential. Though, I'd be happy to actually get all of 2.0's potential speed from my external storage devices.
    Reply
  • danimal_the_animal
    Yeah but whats the throughput of a 2.5 inch harddrive???

    SLOW!!!!!!

    specs mean nothing if the drive is slow.
    Reply
  • jonyah
    First? What about the seagate? It's been out for a while now. Maybe this will help:

    Info:
    http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/blackarmor/blackarmor_ps_110_usb3/

    Or you can actually buy one from here:
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148529&cm_re=seagate_3.0-_-22-148-529-_-Product

    Reply
  • Exactly, this is just the way technology fools people. I know when eSATA came out, people talked about being able to use the full bandwidth, while drives were not even saturating the USB2 bandwidth. same goes with Express card slot. Its not bad to have these technology enhancements, but whats the use of having 16 lane super highway with slow cars..
    Reply
  • JohnnyLucky
    From reading the article it seem as though it seems the idea is to be able to transport and transfer large quantities of data. I didn't get the impression that it was meant to be used like a permanent hard drive.
    Reply
  • ivan_chess
    Unless that thing either RAIDs several disks together or is using SSD then the USB 3.0 is not being fully utilized.
    Reply
  • insaneclowngod
    jonyahFirst? What about the seagate? It's been out for a while now. Maybe this will help:Info:http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/p _110_usb3/Or you can actually buy one from here:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod -_-Product

    and now to quote the quote

    "...domestic and international buyers, making it the first USB 3.0 device with significant sales volume,"
    Reply
  • milktea
    BW is not fully utilized, but still it should be much faster than 25MB/s that I'm getting now with USB2 ext HDDs. I'd be happy if USB3 ext HDDs can reach 50MB/s sustaining. Speed matching close to the current eSATA.
    Reply
  • sliem
    lol @ "unsuspecting game developers"
    Reply
  • jakesbuddy
    I bought a 1TB USB 3.0 Western Digital external hard drive that came with an expansion card and I get read speeds over 100MB/s. While it doesn't come close to saturating the bandwidth, it has switched the bottleneck from the usb port to the hard drive. It is just as fast as transferring files between my internal sata hard drives, and it saves me loads of time.
    Reply