USB 3.0 External SSD Drives by Iomega

On Friday, Iomega introduced a set of USB 3.0 external SSD (Solid State Drives) with capacities from 64GB to 256GB. These new SSDs have the higher transfer rates of USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed) and still fully compatible with older PCs that only have USB 2.0 ports.

USB 3.0 SuperSpeed has up to 10 times the transfer rate of USB 2.0 and the SSD’s inherent speed allows the new drives to perform up to twice as fast as spinning 7,200rpm USB 3.0 drives. When the drive connected to USB 2.0, it operate at USB 2.0 speeds. So you can still go for USB 3.0 drives even if you don’t have a PC with USB 3.0 ports yet.

In addition to speed, the SSD drives have strong durability. All spinning drives have moving parts, while SSDs have none. The SSD Flash drive is more likely to survive careless porters or airline baggage handlers better than a spinning drive.

The Iomega SSD Flash drives also come with a bunch of bundled software including Iomega’s v.Clone (drive cloning) software, one year of Trend Micro Internet Security software or Smart Surfing software, Iomega QuikProtect (file backup), Roxio Retrospect Express (more customizable file and hard drive backup), and 2GB of Mozy Online Backup service.

The Iomega External SSD Flash Drives will be available in early November, and will be priced at $229.00 for 64GB, $399 for 128GB, and $749.00 for 256GB.