OK, it may remain a typical hard drive…or is it? I think that you might just find that WD has a few things up their sleeves with their external hard drive line.

There are many external hard drives available, which use USB 2.0 and sometimes Firewire connectors to attach to any type of computer. More and more solutions feature a networking port, which allows setting up a simple NAS server in your home or small office. So where should the hard drive makers go now?

Western Digital has had the right touch when it comes to creating products that address demands that are outside the focus of, let’s say, traditional storage companies. One example is the Raptor hard drive family, which was the first to run 10,000 RPM on a SATA interface. With no enterprise business (SCSI drives) to defend, the firm could easily afford to release the 36 GB version in 2003, and simply watch how the market would react. Feedback obviously was good enough to release a 74 GB model (which was somewhat faster) at the end of the same year. [Read the rest]

Tags: usb, hard drive, light effects, external drive, firewire