Western Digital, not a company we are used to seeing at trade shows, made their first appearance at this weekis MACWORLD, announcing the release of their 80GB 7200RPM External FireWire drive. The drive can reportedly achieve throughput rates of 30MB/second. This product is externally powered, and contains two FireWire port. This will allow you to daisy chain other devices to the drive, instead of tying up one (and maybe your only) FireWire port. The drive will be available late August, with a suggested retail price of $379.
For those who prefer internal drives, and want even more storage, you may want to check out Western Digitalis 100GB 7200 RPM drive. It was announced last week, and will be available some time this month. Pricing was unavailable.
For those who do not have FireWire, Western Digital also offers FireWire adapters for both PCMCIA and PCI slot types. We are glad to see them show their support for the Mac market, and look forward to ever-increasing drive sizes.