Iomega To Replace USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drives with 3.0

Iomega has announced that it is moving all of its USB 2.0 portable external hard drives to the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface, starting with the 500GB and 1TB eGo Portable Hard Drives in early October. The company says its all-USB 3.0 drive lineup will come at no price premium over its USB 2.0 products.

Fully compatible with USB 2.0 computers, the new eGo drives will combine AES 256 hardware encryption with Iomega's DropGuard Xtreme, which provides protection from drops of nearly seven feet or twice the industry average. They'll be followed in the move to the new 5Gbps interface -- 10 times the bandwidth of USB 2.0 -- by the Iomega Prestige Compact Portable Hard Drive Line in the first quarter of 2011 and the rest of Iomega's portable hard drives shortly thereafter.

All of Iomega's 2.5-inch portable hard drives require no power supply beyond the USB bus and come with cables for USB 2.0 and 3.0 systems. The bundled Iomega Protection Suite includes Roxio Retrospect Express and Iomega QuikProtect backup software, a 12-month subscription to Trend Micro Internet Security for the PC or Smart Surfing for the Mac, 2GB of free MozyHome online backup (unlimited for $4.95/month), and v.Clone software that captures a virtual image of your PC for seamless, file-synchronized use on another computer.

The company sells USB 3.0 adapters for notebook ExpressCard and desktop PCI Express slots for $40 each.