In recent years, that vast majority of thumbdrive "innovations" have been...well...non-technical. However, Kanguru has actually done something useful by integrating an eSATA plug with a standard USB 2.0 drive. For folks with eSATA capability, that means performance speeds that are several times faster than USB. The drive even comes packaged with an eSATA + Power bracket and an eSATA + Power cable for easy hookup. The drives are shipping now in 16GB ($US85) and 32GB ($US120) varieties with a 64GB version slated for January of 2009. [Marketwatch]

Most hard drive enclosures aren't winning any beauty contests, but at least the Datamore Porté is putting on some lipstick, tightening the girdle and giving it her all. This USB or eSATA enclosure for SATA drives features that moving while standing still look along with a hot rear gull-wing door. Bonus shot:

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New SATA specs!! The governing body of SATA (known as SATA-IO) has announced their SATA Revision 3.0 specifications, which is important because it will dictate the transfer speeds of internal hard drives (among other things). SATA Rev 3 will hit data transfers up to 6 Gbps (the original maxed at 1.5 Gbps and sequel reached 3 Gbps) and allow for better power management. Sounds good...it's just too bad there's not a hard drive on the market that can read or write at 6 Gbps. (Well, other than this crazy rig.) [SATA-IO via Electronista]

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Previously it was double slots and eSATA, now the cartridge-style HDD dock gets a one-touch backup button. Makes it ideal for backing up your main drive to an old HDD you've got spare, and then bunging the backup in a cupboard until you need it. It's got eSATA and USB 2 connectivity and even comes with an internal SATA to external eSATA conversion bracket for your desktop PC. Takes both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives, but though it plays nicely with PCs and Macs, the one-touch button only works with PCs. Available now for US$53. [Brando]

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First there was the strangely Nintendo cartridge-like USB HDD dock, then there was the USB hub version. Now the strange external drive dock has got two slots for either 3.5- or 2.5-inch SATA drives, and also connects to your PC via eSata. There's one connection for each, mind you, so you'd better have a few slots free—though you can fall back on the USB option. Available soon for US$107.56. [GeekStuff4U via Akihabaranews]

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Seagate is taking their first crack at external DVR storage with the Showcase line of HDDs. The Showcase drives range in size from 250GB to 1TB, work with both eSATA and USB connections, and can record a whopping 12 HD streams simultaneously. For now, Motorola cable boxes are the only ones compatible with the Showcase, so TiVo owners and others should hold off until we hear more. They'll be on sale this fall, full release after the jump. [Seagate]

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Western Digital's been churning out these My Book external hard drives in all sorts of configurations, but this 1 and 2TB Studio Edition IIs seem to be the most feature rich yet. It's got FireWire 400/800, eSATA, USB 2.0, RAID 0 or 1, and Mac support (you can also reformat it for PCs). Looking at Western Digital's Editions page, these come equipped with all the features except for remote sharing and networking, because there's no network port.

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The Serial ATA Standards guys just approved a bus-powered eSATA spec that may see the light of day as early as late summer or early fall. This comes as a relief since eSATA is making its way into the... Read More »

The guys at Wired and BoingBoing stirred up a hornet's nest this morning by alleging that Western Digital's 1TB MyBook World Edition external hard drives "won't share media files over network connections". That got us worried, since we just acquired one of the 1TB three-way (eSATA, FireWire and USB) Home Edition drives to plug into our eSATA ports, looking forward to sharing some DivX, XviD and various audio files over our home network. But never fear. We plugged our drive into one of the PCs here via USB and found out what's up, first-hand.

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You probably don't want to use something like this eSATA to USB adaptor to keep an external drive going for any extended period of time— it would be all too easy to trip up and unplug one of the many cables in such a complex setup. But for a quick data grab or dump onto a spare disk, I'd say this could come in pretty handy for anyone working on a bench with many disks, day in and day out. [Brando]