Buffalo is set to cross the USB 3.0 finish line first with their HD-HU3 hard drive. They also plan on offering NEC’s IFC-PCIE2U3 2-port PCI Expressx1 host controller with the drive so you can, you know, use it.
The drives will be available this month — although it appears to be a Japan-only release for the moment. The drives will run around $US250 and $US284 for 1TB and 1.5TB models respectively (a 2TB model is also in the works), and the controller will run an additional $US60. It’s probably a bit early to jump on 3.0, but chances are we won’t have to wait long before the technology goes mainstream. [Buffalo Japan via Engadget]
matt
Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 10:02 AMI bet esata is still faster, be interesting to see the bench marks.
for instance, the controller via pci-express 2.0 1x is limited to 500MB/s so you’ve only got 5gb/s of bandwidth between the 2 usb ports on it. though that will be more than enough for 2 mechanical drives for the time being.
I assume no one will be stupid enough to release or buy a PCI usb3 card.
I assume usb3 is backwards compatible?