Features - Storage Innovations:

ADDONICS ALLOWS 3.5" DRIVE TO BE USED LIKE HOT-SWAP CARTRIDGE

Addonics Technologies announced the Console Drive -- a storage solution that enables any standard 3.5-inch IDE hard drive to be used like a hot-swap data cartridge.

The Addonics Console Drive is one of the most flexible hard drive enclosure solutions on the market. It can turn a standard 3.5-inch IDE hard drive into either an external hard drive or a removable hard drive cartridge. With the Console Drive, users can also interchange any of the following storage devices -- 3.5-inch IDE hard drive, Addonics Pocket CD, DVD, CDRW, or DVD+/-R/RW device with an open 5.25-inch drive bay.

This new Addonics solution connects to any of the following interfaces: USB 2.0/1.1, Firewire/iLink, Card Bus/PCMCIA, Serial ATA, IDE or SCSI. The flexibility of the Console Drive allows removable or ATAPI devices to be utilized in a wide range of applications and equipment such as server applications, vehicle PC systems, home entertainment and remote storage connections.

The Console Drive is modular, expandable and adaptable. Instead of locking in a proprietary storage solution or one interface standard, the Console Drive provides the necessary components to convert industry-standard IDE and ATAPI storage devices into a simple removable or external storage device. Many components of the Console Drive are designed to be re-useable and interchangeable to help reduce your storage investment, cost of ownership and minimize obsolescence. You can remove any drive in seconds and share or replace it with another. Expanding storage options has never been quicker and transferring data between systems has never been easier.

Maximum data transfer rates vary by the interface used and range from 1.5MB per second for USB 1.1 to 150MB per second for Serial ATA. Hot swap is certified with USB, Firewire under Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 or XP, and Serial ATA (when used with Addonics SATA Host controller) under Windows 2000 and XP.

The Addonics Console Drive includes:

• One Console Cradle, which fits inside a standard 5.25-inch drive bay and includes with a back plane that can attach to multiple storage devices.
• HDD Console Tray, which enables the Console HD enclosure to be used as a removable hard drive via the Console Cradle. Addonics also offers the DVD Console Tray to enable the Addonics Pocket CD, DVD, DVD/CDRW, DVD+/-R/RW to be used as a removable ATAPI device via the Console Cradle.
• Console HD enclosure, a hard drive enclosure that turns any 3.5-inch IDE hard drive into an external hard drive with flexible interface connections, or a removable hard drive.
• One of the following USIB interface cables -- USB 2.0/1.1 USIB, Firewire/iLink, Card Bus/PCMCIA, or external Serial ATA USIB interface cable.

By combining any of the components above, users can within minutes build a removable hard drive rack with hot swap interface connection. They can also assemble a Console ExDrive35 (External Hard Drive) with multiple interface connections or a combination of the previously mentioned solutions.