LaCie rolls out world’s smallest-ever USB 3.0 drives
updated 02:05 pm EDT, Fri September 10, 2010
Rikiki mobile and Minimus desktop form factors
LaCie has taken the wraps from its new line of small form factor USB 3.0 hard drive, which it claims are the world’s smallest ever. The portable Rikiki and desktop-sized Minimus drives deliver a theoretical high-speed 5Gbs/s perfomance over USB 3.0, in a brushed aluminum casing that takes up less space. Both also have 10GB of online storage space through Wuala.
Both drives come with support for Mac and Windows, but as with most USB 3.0 hardware will only function optimally with a full native link. Either drive is backwards-compatible with USB 2.0's 480Mbps peak speeds. The Rikiki hard drive costs $100 for 500GB of capacity. Moving to the Minimus starts higher at $129 but doubles the capacity to 1TB.
Minimus
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Rikiki
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Rikiki
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Joined: Jun 2009
Mace Moneta
"...deliver a theoretical high-speed 5Gbs/s perfomance..."
No, they don't. The USB 3.0 peak interface speed is meaningless, as this device uses a standard rotating disk drive. The sustained throughput is typically less than 400Mbits/sec (about 50MBytes/sec). Putting a faster interface on a slow device does not magically make it faster.