USB 2.0 Storage

First up from IOgear was the new Ion-Drives. These new USB 2.0 hard drive enclosures allow the user to add a 5.25" or 2.5" drive to their PC. While it can be used with existing USB systems the transfer rates don't start to really take off till you add a USB 2.0. These cool looking drives allow you to move files or transport data between PCs very easily. Using USB 2.0 you can achieve transfer rates of about 480Mbit which is plenty fast to stream music or video which might be once use for this product. These were some of the first real and yes, we do mean real, USB 2.0 products that we have seen.

Here is the cool looking IOgear 5.25" USB 2.0 Drive enclosure. Just add a hard drive and a USB 2.0 connection and you have instant transportable storage at a very reasonable cost.

Although we thought that the Ion 5.25" was cool, we that that the Ion 2.5" drive was even better. Just think, you can get one of the new 48GB 5400 RPM laptop hard drives and put it in the Ion 2.5" enclosure and put your MP3 collection on the drive and drop it in your shirt pocket and take it with you can connect it to any PC. Yeah, we thought this was cool!

IOgear showed us their new USB 2.0 Impulse 12x10x40 external CDRW drive. This kit includes a the drive of course plus a USB 2.0 card and the burning software. We thought it looked good and of course it was USB 2.0 compatible.

The IOgear USB 2.0 Impulse 12x10x40 External CDRW drive.