As we are starting to become comfortable with the fact that SATA 6Gb/s is superfluous at the moment we are still keeping our hopes up for USB 3.0. Even if Intel are fighting the urge, the remaining PC market are willing to play. The latest manufacturer to enter the USB 3.0 market is I-O Data, who just announced a triad of products. First of all two USB 3.0 controller cards, one for desktop and one for notebooks.
I-O Data USB3-PEX requires a free PCIe 2.0 x1 slots for up to 500MB/s transfer rates and USB3-EXC use the ExpressCard interface for notebooks.
Both controller cards can be used together with I-O Data’s first external USB 3.0 harddrive. The unit is called HDJ-UT and ships with 1TB and 1.5TB capacities, and thanks to USB 3.0 SuperSpeed it can achieve speeds up to 139MB/s. The harddrive costs 21,000 YEN and 25,300 YEN respectively ($232 and $280). While the PCI Express controller card costs around $100 and the ExpressCard card $130.
So far they are only available in Japan.
