[ces 2011] Buffalo shipped the first USB 3.0 hard disk in October 2009, and now that USB 3.0 is on the verge of finally hitting the mainstream market, the company is launching three USB 3.0 DriveStation storage devices: The DriveStation Axis, DriveStation Duo and DriveStation Quad. The latter two are RAID devices that are more targeted towards small businesses and professionals. RAID can use several hard disks to either speed up storage performance or increase the safety or your data by replicating data across disks. Buffalo says that the maximum transfer speed of the DriveStation Quad is 235MB/s and that it supports up to 8TB of storage. The DriveStation Duo is close at 225MB/sec, and we guess that the DriveStation Axis single-drive configuration might fetch only half that speed. Of course, all the drives are compatible with USB 2.0.
Here’s the pricing information from Buffalo:
- The DriveStation Quad USB 3.0 is available immediately at an estimated street price of $629.99 for the 4 TB (HD-QL4TU3R5) and $1199.99 for the 8 TB (HD-QL8TU3R5)
- The DriveStation Duo USB 3.0 is available immediately at an estimated street price of $279.99 for the 2 TB (HD-WL2TU3R1) and $459.99 for the 4 TB (HD-WL4TU3R1)
- The DriveStation Axis USB 3.0 is available immediately at an estimated street price of $99.99 for the 1 TB (HD-LB1.0TU3) and $149.99 for the 2 TB (HD-LB2.0TU3).
- The MiniStation Stealth USB 3.0 is available immediately at an estimated street price of $89.99 for the 500 GB (HD-PCT500U3/B) and $129.99 for the 1 TB (HD-PCT1TU3/BB).
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