TMO at Macworld - WiebeTech Introduces New Drive Enclosures, More

by , 7:00 AM EST, January 10th, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- WiebeTech announced several new products, including hard drive interface adapters and enclosures, at Macworld Expo on Tuesday. The company's DriveDock product line has been updated to include two new mini Docks that connect bare SATA hard drives to a computer through a USB or SATA cable, letting them work as if they were installed inside your Mac. The mini USBDock connects the drive to your computer via a USB cable, and the miniSATADock connects the drive via a SATA port. Both adapters are priced at US$74.95, and should be available by the end of March.

The G5Jam Express is a hard drive mounting bracket that adds two more internal drives to the Dual Core G5 Power Mac, bumping the storage capacity up to 2TB. Drives in the bracket can be configured individually or as a RAID, and supports up to 200MB/sec data transfer rates. The G5Jam Express does not include drives, and is priced at US$69.95. It is scheduled to ship mid-January.

The SilverSATA Series drive enclosures are removable drive enclosures that include one, tow, or five hot-swappable drive bays. The enclosures require only one cable to connect to your computer, and the two and five bay models can be configured as a RAID. They connect to your computer via eSATA, and the SilverSATA I (one drive) and SilverSATA II (two drives) also include a USB2 port. The SilverSATA I starts at US$99.95 without any drives, the SilverSATA II starts at $379.95, and the SilverSATA V starts at $999.95.

DriveBlock is a new application that lets you turn the write-block function on or off for certain external WiebeTech drives. Turning write-block on protects the drive from accidentally overwriting data. Initially, DriveBlock will be available in the ToughTech 800 and RT-5 RAID as a free upgrade. It will be added to other products later.