Toshiba Storage announced Thursday plans to begin offering USB 2.0-based backup hard disk drive systems compatible with both Macs and PCs, beginning in Spring, 2007. Available in capcities ranging from 100GB – 160GB, the new drives include backup software and are priced starting at $139.99.
Toshiba is encasing its own 2.5-inch hard disk drive mechanisms in an external black aluminum chassis measuring 5.6 x 3.5 x 1 inch. Also included is automatic data backup software — NTI’s Shadow utility, available for both Mac OS X and Windows. Toshiba expects the drives to appeal to consumers looking to make backups of photos, videos, music and data files.
The drives are bus-powered. Once NTI Shadow is configured it runs in the background, capturing file updates and saving them to the external drive. You can specifiy continuous backup or only backup on certain days, at certain times or with specific frequency.
System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later. The application is a Universal binary.