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Electronics manufacturer Toshiba released what it claims is the world’s thinnest portable hard drive, the Canvio Slim, which measures just 9mm thick, 107 mm long and 75 mm wide, and boasts a storage capacity of 500GB.
The drive, which will be available at select retailers and on ToshibaDirect.com in October 2012, carries a suggested retail price of $114.99.
The device features a brushed-aluminum design and built-In USB 3.0 Interface to help improve file transfer performance for large media files and minimize the wait time for backup. The Canvio is also backward-compatible with USB 2.0 devices, the company noted. In addition to its slim form factor, the drive comes bundled with NTI Backup Now EZ software, which provides a system scan to recommend the best type of coverage; however, the preloaded software is compatible with Windows OS only.
Users can choose between backing up files to the cloud (a free 30-day trial of cloud backup is included), backing up files and folders to the Canvio Slim portable hard drive, backing up anything saved on the computer, or all three. Rounding out the package is a NTFS driver for Mac computers, which allows users to store and access files from a PC or Mac without reformatting. The drive, compatible with a variety of operating systems, is backed by a three-year limited warranty.
“As consumer electronics continue to get thinner, lighter and more portable, we recognized a huge demand to create a storage device that is in line with those trends,” Maciek Brzeski, vice president of product marketing and development of branded storage products for Toshiba America Information Systems’ digital products division, said in a press statement. “With the Canvio Slim, consumers can now easily stash their storage device right along with their Ultrabook, knowing that their data is always safe, even when they’re on the go.”
The Canvio Slim is the latest in a recent spate of hard-drive products released by Toshiba. Last month, the company expanded its enterprise solid-state-drive lineup with three models aimed at high-performance use cases. Its PX-Series is designed for servers that take the most pounding each day: boot, read-intensive, entry-level servers; entry-to-midrange application servers; and high-performance enterprise application servers.
Toshiba, which in 2012 is celebrating its 25th anniversary as the inventor of NAND flash memory, made an impressive comeback in the first quarter of 2012 in the NAND flash storage market, after two major revenue declines in 2011 and the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Defying an industry-wide contraction in revenue, Toshiba surged to double-digit growth, posting NAND sales revenue of $1.71 billion in the first quarter, up 19 percent from $1.43 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to a report from IT research firm IHS.