Sony launches a range of Portable Hard Drives

Not very often to we see primarily computer orientated products from Sony: they tend to stick to the Multimedia and entertainment based markets. But Sony has announced its range of External hard drives which are aimed at the computer user. The inclusion of USB 3.0 would suggest Sony is targeting the mass market created by the native introduction of USB 3.0 to AMD’s newer platforms. The drives come in 500GB variants which have USB 3.0 and 2.0 compatibility in addition to pre-loaded Transfer Accelerator software to increase transfer speeds up to three times as compared to data transmission without the software.

The Password Protection Manager software makes it easy to lock all or part of the drive using advanced AES 256-bit encryption, allowing only password-holders to access the protected data. Meanwhile, Backup Manager makes it a cinch to set up automatic back-ups on any PC, and saves time by intelligently recognizing and backing up only data that has been added or modified. FAT32 formatter software is also included to sync the drives with FAT32 compatible hardware.

Users of Sony Handycam camcorders can link the AV Link function of the HD-EG5U to make playback of AVCHD video on a PlayStation 3 quick and hassle-free. For this, the drive must be connected to the Handycam with the supplied USB adapter cable and the video copied. The drive would then have to be hooked to PlayStation 3 with a USB cable to view the videos using Sony’s Filmy software and without the need of a PC.
Sony’s first ever external hard drives are available in a black, silver or pink case that weighs 220 g. The hard drives are immediately available.

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