eSATA is a new technology that transfers data between the external device and the computer at higher rates than ever before, and USB 2.0 is one of the most common method of connecting external devices to personal computers, Western Digital said last week.
As consumers increasingly rely on digital media to secure their documents and valuable personal content, they often fear that changes in technology may render their data inaccessible, Western Digital of Lake Forest, California said. Western Digital provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company also produces reliable, high-performance hard drives that keep users' data close-at-hand and secure from loss. The company also applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage products, Western Digital added.
eSATA uses the same interface technology that is becoming the standard inside PCs, Western Digital said. It is designed to connect peripherals such as external hard drives with the same data transfer speed as internal components, the company said. Use of eSATA by the computing and consumer electronics industries is increasing with the expectation that its superior performance will drive it to be the next standard interconnect for external devices, offering an obsolescence prevention plan for consumers, Western Digital added.
Virtually all motherboards being shipped include the SATA (Serial ATA) interface for internal drives and many PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) cards are available to connect eSATA hard drives to PCs and Macs, Western Digital said. An increasing number of motherboard manufacturers are incorporating support for eSATA connector ports, it added.
While the digitization of photos, music and videos have improved customers’ ability to collect, manage and share personal content, they fear that the evolution of technology could make it difficult to access their content in the years to come, Western Digital said. With USB 2.0 and eSATA, customers can rest assured that their digital content will be accessible using tomorrow's computers, the company added.
An increasing portion of consumers' content stored on their computers and storage devices is video and music, Western Digital said. eSATA offers consumers superior performance for multimedia applications such as streaming music or movies, or video editing, the company said. The eSATA interface on My Book Premium ES Edition can move data to and from a PC or Mac as fast as 300 MB/s (megabytes-per-second), which is much faster than USB 2.0, which has a standard transfer rate of about 60 MB/s (480 megabits per second), the company added.
My Book Premium ES Edition is both PC and Mac compatible, and includes EMC Corp.’s Retrospect Express HD 2.0 backup software, which provides users the tools needed to back up and restore a single file or an entire system in a few simple steps, Western Digital said.
The My Book Premium ES Edition is designed in a book shape with a small footprint, and simplifies its advanced features for users, Western Digital said. There is no CD to install as the included software loads from the drive the first time it is plugged in, the company said. Its drive management system, SmartPower, automatically powers the device on and off with the computer, and the Safe Shutdown feature ensures data is saved before shutting down, it added. The LED (light emitting diode) activity lights includes a unique capacity gauge, which makes My Book Premium ES Edition easy to use, Western Digital added.
My Book Premium ES is already available at select retail stores and online retailers at an estimated price of US$ 179 for 320 GB (gigabytes) capacity and US$ 229 for 500 GB capacity, Western Digital said.
