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Buffalo to Ship First USB 3.0 HDDs within the Month

Paul Lilly — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:00:36 -0500

Buffalo, who has offices in Japan, USA, Germany, UK, Ireland, and Taiwan, is well on its way to being the first to release a USB 3.0 hard drive. On Tuesday, the networking and storage company said its HD-HU3 series of USB 3.0 external hard drives would be the "world's first" to ship to retailers, Engadget reports.

The company also plans to offer NEC's IFC-PCIE2U3 2-port PCI-Express x1 host controller because, well, what good is a USB 3.0 drive without a controller to take advantage of it?

But before we get ahead of ourselves, it appears the drives will only be available in Japan when they ship later this month. According to Engadget, the 1TB model will run about $225 after the exchange rate, while the 1.5TB will cost $284. Later on, Buffalo plans to release a 2TB model, which will sell for around $530. Add another $60 for the controller.

Image Credit: Buffalo via Engadget

Buffalo Releases Diminutive USB Display

Paul Lilly — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:54:02 -0600

If all you want a secondary display for is to keep track of your IM conversations, stock quotes, emails, and other tasks of that nature, Buffalo may have just what you're looking for with its new 7-inch display.

As the model number suggests, the FTD-W71USB LCD display plugs into a USB port and offers an 800x480 resolution, 300 nits brightness, a 500:1 contrast ratio, 25ms response time, and a wide viewing angle (vertical: 120 degrees, left and right: 140 degrees). Buffalo says you can rotate the display for either vertical or horizontal viewing, and can also be attached to a tripod stand for use with digital cameras by removing the stand.

If you really want to go hog-wild, Buffalo says you can use up to six units at the same time, making it possible to devote an entire display to every Skype conversation you might have going or, well, whatever else you might require six pint-sized displays.

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: Buffalo

The Latest in Dongle Technology is Very, Very Small

Andy Salisbury — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:01:05 -0600

Buffalo Electronics is staking the claim that their WLI-UC-GN Wi-Fi dongle is the smallest that’s been created. Whether this is true or not, we can’t say for sure, but one can’t help but admire its diminutive size and price tag.

The dongle will only run you $25, and it clocks in at 33mm by 16mm. Evidently, the brains behind the operating aren’t much bigger than the plug that goes into your computer. It’s reported that it will feature B/G certification for backwards compatibility with older wireless networks, base station operation, and an automated security system.

Let’s just hope that we can see this bad boy on our shores sooner than later, because a handy (and cheap) little piece of tech would find plenty of uses.

Image Credit: Buffalo Electronics

Hands-on with the Thinnest Portable Hard Drive Ever, Buffalo’s Mini-Station

Norman Chan — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:00:00 -0500

Buffalo Technology, makers of high-end storage and networking peripherals (their products are apparently very popular in Japan), today announced several new products which they hope will bolster their market share in the US. One of the more exciting products they showed us is the Mini-Station portable hard drive, which is easily the smallest hard drive we’ve seen, period. The 60GB storage device is a mere 5 millimeters thick (.2 inches), and measures 3.4 by 2.2 inches. Inside the tiny frame is the smallest external spinning hard drive on the market, a single platter 1.8” drive.

As you can tell from our photos, the drive is smaller than a business card, and can easily fit into your wallet. The USB plug is extended from the top corner of the drive, and even has a small blue LED light to indicate data transfer. We were delighted to hear that the Mini-Station will come bundled not only with Memeo remote backup software but also mobile versions of FireFox and Thunderbird. It also includes Turbo USB, proprietary Buffalo drivers that optimize USB data transfer on Windows XP systems (by up to 20%).

The Mini-Station will be released at the end of this month, in both 30GB and 60GB flavors. No word on price yet.

Buffalo DriveStation Combo 4

David Murphy — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:50:00 -0500

Buffalo’s 500GB DriveStation Combo 4 external drive is the fastest USB drive we’ve ever tested, and it even holds its own on an eSATA connection. That’s thanks to a propriety technology called TurboUSB that squeaks additional speeds out of the device. On Windows XP, a DriveStation connected with TurboUSB improved its synthetic read and write speeds by 20 percent (even though its burst speeds confused our benchmark) over a typical USB connection. The device’s real-world speeds weren’t as dramatic—a mere four percent increase—but it was an improvement nonetheless.

We didn’t see any real-world performance improvement between the two modes in Windows Vista because TurboUSB is built into the operating system itself. We’d definitely use this device on XP, but it’s a wash with Vista.

The DriveStation comes with Memeo AutoBackup software and a full-disk security utility that conceals your drive under 128- or 256-bit AES encryption. The latter program’s lock and unlock shortcuts for the encryption mechanism are mislabeled, but we were more bothered that it accepted our password via USB but rejected it over eSATA.

Minus these quirks, the DriveStation is a fine external storage product. It’s not blazing a speed trail on its eSATA connection, but it stuffs the USB pipe.

Asus Eee PCs to Get 32GB and 64GB SSDs

Paul Lilly — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:26:35 -0500

Solid state drives continue to make headway into the marketplace and Buffalo appears to be readying a herd of 32GB (SHD-EP9M32G) and 64GB (SHD-EP9M64G) SSDs for the Asus Eee PC 900 and 901 ultraportables. Not much else can be discerned from the translated press release, but according to PC Watch (and Google Translate), Buffalo will price the 32GB and 64GB at 16,800 and 33,600 yen, or $150 and $300 USD respectively.

Japan will get first crack at the new SSDs come mid to late September, but if you simply can't wait for Buffalo's drives to migrate stateside, at least one company is already selling the units with worldwide shipping.

Image Credit: Buffalo

Buffalo NFiniti WZR2-G300N

Michael Brown — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:44:11 -0600

From the get-go, Buffalo’s Nfiniti WZR2-G300N installation routine prompts you to establish a new password for accessing the router’s firmware. Considering all the legitimate concerns about network security, why is this step the exception rather than the rule for router-installation wizards?

Unfortunately for Buffalo, this is one of the few aspects of this product to impress us. The company’s AOSS (AirStation OneTouch Secure System) is supposed to make installation a one-step process. Once you’ve installed the wireless network adapter’s device driver and client manager software on your notebook PC, you’re supposed to be able to press a button on the router, click the mouse on your notebook, and presto, your network is set up. After several failed attempts at using AOSS, we reverted to Buffalo’s installation wizard.

Here again, Buffalo’s installation routine prompted us to choose which encryption method we’d like to use to protect our network, and it warned us that without encryption, it would be possible for unauthorized users to access our network. No other router’s installation routine bothered to do that.

The WZR2-G300N took fourth place in our close-range TCP throughput test with WPA2 security, averaging a mediocre 34.9Mb/s (a fraction faster than the Belkin N1, which averaged a mere 34.3Mb/s). The router performed much better when we limited it to operating in 802.11n mode, averaging 46.5Mb/s at close range to take second place behind the Linksys WRT350N, which averaged 46.9Mb/s.

But Buffalo’s router fell apart at long range. As with the Belkin N1, our notebook outfitted with the company’s wireless adapter card was unable to communicate with the network when we tested it at 40 feet and then 120 feet from the router. It seems the WZR2-G300N just doesn’t like competing with lots of other wireless networks operating in the same vicinity.