First USB 3.0 Dongle Connecting eSATA Drives Arrives
What should be the first of many convenient devices in USB 3.0 has just crossed our news desk, the SIIG USB 3.0 to eSATA adapter. Minuscule in size, the adapter can super-size your bandwidth if you have USB 3.0 ports, but no eSATA port. Connect this to a full power USB 3.0 port and get up to 3GB/s performance of any eSATA based drives. You'll need to supply your own eSATA cable, but the USB 3.0 bus should contain enough juice to power the drives. You'll be able to read and write to drives up to 2TB in size. They can even be hot-swapped from drive to drive if you have the need.
There's another hidden goody that we'll hope to see in other USB 3.0 is backwards compatibility to USB 2.0. This dongle works just fine with both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 machines. That makes this device a great tool to have handy, which will remain useful as you gain more and more access to USB 3.0 computers. There's only drivers for the Windows XP class OS's and up to Windows 7 to Server 2008. No support for Linux or Apple has been released yet. On the up side, Windows drivers are still native and built into the OS. $49.99 gets you this handy little adapter, and it's available now.
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Panda Anti-virus Distributes Free USB Vaccine
Anti-virus developer Panda has a compiled together a little program that they are giving away free. This program they are calling an Anti-malware Vaccine for USB is intended to staunch the spread of viruses by thumbdrives. Conficker's damage worldwide was legendary and one of the vehicles it used to spread was infecting USB drives. The vaccine gives you the option of disabling the autorun feature of Windows that conficker exploits. Disabling autorun is not a big loss for most people but it can be likened to throwing the baby out with the bath water. Autorun is a very handy function for portable application development, such as PortableApps. Microsoft unfortunately seems to agree, and has removed autorun from Vista and Windows 7.
The vaccination of the USB drives isn't exactly bulletproof but it will definitely help. It writes a hidden read-only autorun.inf file to the drive. This technique should have some success at least due to obscurity. As long as very few people are using it, virus writers won't target it. This should help you avoid current versions of a conficker and variants. This is a little late to the party, most antivirus programs defend against conficker and the previously mentioned Microsoft overkill move of disabling the whole feature. John 3:16
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Chinese New Year USB Drive, Show 'em You're a Tiger!
Happy Chinese New Year! This year is a special year for those born in the year of the tiger as it rolls around again. People born 12, 24, 36, etc... years ago have special cause to celebrate the return of their birth year which happens in 12 year rotations vs. 12 months via the zodiac. The first of the year's Tiger decorations shows up on a USB flash drive from Kingston. Not the traditional iconic Asian tiger image, this is more of a anime style cartoon. Kingston's drive sports a respectable 8GB of storage. With Kingston, there's no need to worry that it's a quality product.
This drive is a member of the special edition DataTraveler line that has been popular and has been issued for the last 3 years starting in 2007. The slider drive is again being released in Asia from the Taiwanese based headquarters. It's unlikely that any of these will make their way outside of Asia as the demand probably isn't there.
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