Seagate's 1.8-inch Wireless USB drive prototype

We've been hearing of Wireless USB for a while, but Seagate finally has a W-USB prototype 1.8-inch drive that they're showing here at CES to give the concept some wings. They're saying that they're about 12 months away from mass production, but we'll need see a lot more support for the spec before we can expect to give this drive some serious consideration.

[chengann @ Mar 10th 2006 8:53PM]

sorry to drop in an ad...but it's relevant to this discussion.
we do have a wifi-drive.
www.edslab.com
2 MB/sec transfer rate (bottleneck of 802.11g).
in winxp it's recognized as a local hdd.
in other os, it can load a web page to access the same files.

[ozgur @ Jan 8th 2006 6:50PM]

"1.8-inch drive" that's very good

[TZK @ Jan 8th 2006 8:17PM]

What would be great is a micro Wifi drive (powered hopefully) you keep in your pocket, and drop/backup whatever over the wireless. That would really rock if, the power issue could be worked out - I like this idea though, why WUSB though? Most people who would buy this solution probsbly have Wifi already. Maybe they are just trying to blow intel.

[John @ Jan 8th 2006 10:32PM]

Seems like a neat little drive for sharing things with your friends without a computer.... just as long as its not ridiculously expensive.





First Post?

[Mike @ Jan 8th 2006 10:46PM]

Uh...what about power? If you still have to plug it in, what is the value of being wireless?



Perhaps there is an unmentioned battery?



And how is this any different then from a NAS? or from one of the many access points where you can have a shared drive linke the DLINK or the Linksys router/access points?



Inquiring minds want to know...

[Emceay @ Jan 9th 2006 2:28AM]

Would it run on a different frequency than 802.11 and bluetooth?

[Phil @ Jan 9th 2006 4:36AM]

In reference to Mike's Post dated 10:46PM on Jan 8th 2006 by Mike.



Why would you want the usb hub to have a battery? I think the package most includes a USB dongle to go into your laptop that connects wirelessly to the usb hub which is powered through a transformer plugged into your wall. The thing is going to be tied down to your assortment of printers, hard drives wired gadgets anyway...



One thing that would worry me is what happens if it disconnects when connected to a hard drive or ipod? Ipods and other drives always warn you of the dangers of disconnecting them when they are transferring data.



Regards Phil

[Julio @ Jan 9th 2006 10:31AM]

That sounds like a nice idea you could have a drawer full of them and just use a laptop or desktop computer to access it.

They might aswell just make a router with a 200-500GB hard drive in it instead.would combine both aspects into one

[TC @ Jan 9th 2006 10:40AM]

Emceay - It could in theory interfere with wi-fi as the allocated spectrum for WUSB overlaps that of wi-fi, but as WUSB only pumps out -41 dBm/MHz (i.e not strong signal) there shouldn't be too much interference.

[IV @ Jan 9th 2006 11:30AM]

Holy ever-loving...

I'm all for this, but I just see me on a couch and saying, "Well, I can't come up, but I'll hold my WUSB-key out or the car window and you can grab the files from there." I don't need anything else making me feel lazy, that's what WoW is for.



Wet-wire USB, show it to me, show it to me now.

[IV @ Jan 9th 2006 11:32AM]

*my friend on a couch...

[Bryan Lewis @ Jan 9th 2006 11:48AM]

I agree the use of the wireless drive seems a bit challenged when factoring in power. But I would love to see other wireless USB devices, such as a scanner and better wireless printing. It may sound a bit pathetic, but not have to lug my laptop across the house to plug it into my scanner would be cool.

[mjt13xx @ Jan 9th 2006 4:43PM]

Isn't all of this what Bluetooth is for? I mean am I completely lost or do I HotSync my Treo without wires, type on my keyboard, and click with my mouse without wires, and talk on my headset once again without those pesky wires. Bluetooth is wireless USB, just like WiFi is wireless ethernet. They just have different names as far as I'm concerned.

[Sam G. @ Jan 15th 2006 10:39AM]

The data rate of Bluetooth is 721 Kbps or 90 KBytes per second. I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend all day waiting on a Bluetooth drive to boot or transfering some measly little file. The Wireless USB (WUSB) STARTS at 480mbps (*Cough*). That's 60 megabytes a second with future projections of 1 Gigabit a second. Yea Baby, Yea!



As for power, WUSB is intertwined with UWB (Ultra Wide Band) RF protocol that is known for packing ungodly amounts of bandwidth into little to no RF power. Plus, I don't mind plugging things into a power source. That still gives me the freedom to put the device on the shelf, across the room or on the other side of the house/apt.



Bluetooth is good at what it does but WUSB will take it to the next level and be faster than 802.11 networking (11 and 54 Mbps). With WUSB, video/Data/Music could be live streamed around a media system without the "rack of rats nested wires" and be controlled by multiple computers and devices nearby.



I say bring it on.