Developments in convenient personal storage continue

Just how many different form factors can personal storage take? We’re often amazed at the ingenuity of storage manufacturers in striving for bigger, faster, more convenient and simply devilishly clever new form factors, and we saw a few of them at this weekend’s PMA show in sunny Florida. Not new (but bigger) is the US$134.99 SanDisk 2 GB Ultra II SD Plus card, that looks and functions like a typical SD card but folds in half to reveal a high-speed USB 2.0 connector. Going one better was Pretec, which offered the first look at the both the world’s fastest CF Card and a flash drive with built-in card reader. The Pretec 133X CF Card is capable of running at up to 20MB/sec and 14MB/sec of access speed in read & write. The Pretec e-Disk II+ is an expandable USB flash drive with an embedded 512MB flash memory (default) which can be expanded to 4.5GB by simply inserting an optional SD/MMC card

The SanDisk 2 GB Ultra II SD Plus card

The SanDisk Ultra II SD Plus line features write speeds of 9 megabytes (MB) per second and read speeds of 10MB/sec(2). The cards are targeted at enthusiast and prosumer-level digital photographers with 5 mega-pixel or higher resolution digital cameras that require significantly faster flash memory film cards. The faster cards allow photographers to shoot images in rapid sequence and minimize the lag time between shots.

The SanDisk Ultra II product line also includes CompactFlash and Memory Stick PRO Duo card formats. The 512MB SanDisk Ultra II SD Plus costs US$70 and the 1GB costs US$90 and both are available now. The 2GB will cost US$135 and hits the streets in June.

Pretec 133X CF Card

The Pretec 133X CF Card is more than 50% faster than it’s predecessor (the Pretec 80X CF card, the fastest CF card in the world two years ago) and is capable of running at up to 20MB/sec and 14MB/sec of access speed in read & write. The card is fully ATA/True IDE compatible and operational in both 5V and 3.3V platforms. The introduction of the high performance CF card addresses the growing need for higher density and faster speed data storage in leading-edge products and systems.

Pretec has consistently demonstrated the highest capacity CF cards in the world from 64MB (10/1998), 6GB (3/2003) to 12GB (9/2005). In addition to the excellent track record of Pretec’s relentless pursuit of innovation towards higher capacity and higher performance, Pretec has also established the reliability reputation by becoming the first CF card supplier in the world which can provide industrial and military grade rugged CF cards constructed with precision mechanics, full metal protection, sustain a wide range (-40 degrees to 125 degrees) working temperature and offer an ultimate level of data protection and security features.

Pretec expandable USB Flash Drive with built-in card reader

Pretec showed a multiple function USB flash storage device with built-in card reader, the first such multiple function device in the world. Known as the e-Disk II+, it is also the first small form factor card reader in the world capable of accessing the full 8-bit data bus offered by the new generation of SD/MMC cards (SD 1.1 & MMC 4.1 or MMCplus).

The Pretec e-Disk II+ is an expandable USB flash drive with an embedded 512MB flash memory (default) which can be expanded to 4.5GB by simply inserting an optional SD/MMC card. e-Disk II+ supports both full-size SD/MMC cards and RS-MMC 4.1 (or MMCMobile), and works perfectly with Pretec 133X 4GB SD card and 266X 4GB MMC card to provide users an unprecedented experience of convenient, versatile, high capacity, and high speed mobile data transfer.

e-Disk II+ is also a member of a series of Pretec multiple function USB products offering both memory and I/O capabilities, which includes the currently available i-Disk BT (USB Flash + Bluetooth), i-Disk WLAN (with Wi-Fi connectivity) and many others which Pretec will launch in the next few months.

e-Disk II+ can be purchased with different style housings which support specific memory card interfacing such as miniSD or Memory Stick Duo.