Granite Digital, a manufacturer of Firewire storage solutions, has begun shipping its new Smart Drive Series of FireWire enclosures that include low-profile, external storage enclosures with built-in LCD+keypad user interfaces.
The Smart Drive user interface incorporates a 2-line by 20 character LCD and a 2-button keypad. By default the user interface shows the enclosure’s real-time status or performance. Using the keypad, users navigate menus offering information on the FireWire-IDE bridge, the hard disk, the FireWire connection, and the host computer. Additional diagnostic and utility menus allow testing, verifying, and even erasing the hard disk without a host computer.
Granite Digital’s Field Update Utility is available for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. And the company will be demonstrating the Mac OS X version in booth 572 at this week’s Macworld Conference & Expo in New York.