I-O Data released the HDS2-UT USB 3.0 external RAID enclosure. It is available in three variants with pre-installed hard drives: the 2 TB HDS2-UT2.0, 4 TB HDS2-UT4.0, and 6 TB HDS2-UT6.0. Measuring 90 x 135 x 176 mm, and weighing 2.2 kg, the HDS2-UT is a 2-bay external 3.5" SATA HDD enclosure, with the ability to run its two drives in RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD modes. To take advantage of RAID 0, the enclosure connects to the host over 5 GT/s USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface. Also included is software to build, manage, and monitor RAID volumes. The enclosure relies on an external power brick. Slated for market release in late-April, the HDS2-UT 2 TB, 4 TB, and 6 TB variants are priced at 35,490 JPY (US $439); 46,725 JPY (US $578); and 66,780 JPY (US $827), respectively.

AREA released a unique portable hard drive enclosure that allows you to switch between SATA and USB 3.0 interfaces (model: SD-S35U3-SL2). Its modular design allows this change. When in SATA mode, the USB adapter is detached, and a cap covers the direct SATA (power+data) interface of the enclosed drive. When in USB 3.0 mode, the adapter interfaces with the SATA power/data connections, supplies power from an external DC power adapter, and connects the drive to a USB 3.0 host. It is backwards-compatible with USB 2.0. Switching between the two modes, and replacing the enclosed drive is a tool-free process. Measuring 190 x 133 x 38.3 mm, and weighing about 780 g (empty weight), the enclosure's body is largely made of brushed metal that's ridged on the sides to dissipate heat. Slated for April 16, the SD-S35U3-SL2 is priced at 2,480 JPY (US $30).

Japanese store Kuroutoshikou listed the GW2.5CL-SUP3, a 2.5" external HDD/SSD enclosure. Measuring 73 x 122 x 135 mm (WxDxH), the enclosure is a rare combination of an internal SATA interface supports SATA 6 Gb/s data-rate, while its external interface is USB 3.0 SuperSpeed, which alleviates interface bottlenecks to a great extant. A unique feature here is an LED-based display that gives you a very rough idea of the free-space left on the installed HDD/SSD. Installing or removing a drive is a tool-free process. On sale now, the GW2.5CL-SUP3 is priced at 3,000 JPY (US $36.5).

Mach Xtreme Technology Inc., a worldwide leader in top performance, high reliability and user-friendly designed PC components, today unveiled Kapsling Series External Enclosure offering MacBook Air 2010/2011 users unmatched convenience.

Mach Xtreme Technology MX-KAPSLING external enclosure is compatible with stock MacBook Air 2010/2011 low-profile SATA SSDs offering users flexibility, reliability and fast data transfer speed thanks to USB 3.0 connectivity. MX-KAPSLING is perfect for adding more storage space to your notebook and freeing-up space on your internal SSD. The USB 3.0 interface supports quick and reliable data transfer to and from any desktop or notebook. The solid aluminum body design is effective against any external shock and offers excellent heat dissipation.

Japanese company RATOC Systems introduced a trio of products that lets users expand their data storage once they run out of drive bays and ports in their case. The first one is the RS-EC32PE-U3R, a bundle consisting of a 2-bay USB 3.0 to SATA 3 Gb/s RAID enclosure and a PCIe USB 3.0 addon card; the RS-EC32EX-U3R, which is a bundle including the same 2-bay RAID enclosure, but including a 2-port USB 3.0 expansion card in the ExpressCard34 form-factor; and REX-PEU3X, which is a standalone 2-port USB 3.0 expansion card in the PCIe form-factor.

The expansion cards in these bundles are based on new Renesas μPD720202 chipset. The RAID enclosure has two 3.5-inch SATA drive bays. Its controller provides a maximum data transfer performance of 372 MB/s. It supports disk organization modes of "single" (just a single disk connected), RAID JBOD, RAID 0, and RAID 1. Expected to launch mid-March, the RATOC RS-EC32PE-U3R and RS-EC32EX-U3R are priced at 11,130 JPY (US $138), the REX-PEU3X goes for 3,360 JPY (US $41.7).

People want things around their living room TV to look like a VCR or a Blu-ray player, something that has a minimalist rectangular facade and that's stackable in decks. HTPC makers such as Tranquil have clearly understood this concept, and now, so did ORICO. The company unveiled the 7662, a dual-3.5" HDD enclosure that's designed for the living room. The enclosure has two 3.5" SATA hard drive hot-swap bays on its front panel, each of the two bays have lockable caddies. The enclosure connects the drives to to a host (an HTPC, or directly to a USB Mass Storage-compatible TV), over USB and eSATA.

ORICO has two variants, the 7662SUSJ has USB 2.0 and eSATA; while the 7662SUSJ3 has USB 3.0 and eSATA. The enclosure has a built-in power-supply and plugs in directly to the wall without a messy power brick. Each of the two bays has a temperature-activated exhaust fan. The 7662 also features auto-Hibernation, which spins down a hard drive if it's been idling for too long. The 7662SUSJ is priced at 448 RMB (US $71), and the 7662SUSJ3 at 478 RMB (US $76).

Thermaltake, being the industry pioneer brand with expertise in PC power and thermal solutions, and continues to drive toward the corporate mission of "delivering the perfect user experience" in all segment of the market, began the Max series with a simple idea of creating a protective cover to magnify the ease of removing a HDD from Thermaltake chassis and evolved into a character that can maximize and utilize the function of HDD. Today, brings in the Max 5G 2.5" hard drive external enclosure and the Max Duo (SSD & HDD) rack with USB 3.0 ports to stretch the solutions provided by the Max series for users.

Japanese company Logitec (not to be confused with Logitech), released an ingenious new 3.5-inch external HDD enclosure, the LHD-EG, which features temperature-sensing, and a thermal-controlled fan that keeps the drive and electronics cool, making it fit for on-field (under shade) usage. The fan stays off till the ambient temperature is less than or equal to 45 °C.

Logitec is pairing this enclosure with Seagate's Barracuda 7200.14 SATA 6 Gb/s HDDs, to come up with three capacity options: 1 TB, 2 TB, and 3 TB. The enclosure provides eSATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 (backwards compatible with USB 2.0) to connect to the host. When connected via eSATA, the USB cable should be plugged in to draw power, or a 12V external power brick has to be used. Measuring 120 x 199 x 35mm (WxDxH), the drives typically weigh 1.1 kg. Disc-cloning and backup software comes bundled. The 1 TB, 2 TB, and 3 TB variants are priced at 13,480 JPY (US $171); 17,980 JPY (US $228); and 29,800 (US $378).

Cooler Master, an industry leading chassis, thermal solution, peripheral, and accessory manufacturer today unveils the Elite 361 rotatable chassis. A formidable Mini-Tower contender, Elite 361 focuses on versatility and expandability within a compact enclosure.

Touting a modern minimalist design, Elite 361 is engineered to be accommodating in space restricted work zones. Given its unique structure and airflow design, Elite 361 can be placed either horizontally or vertically within a space. A rotatable Cooler Master logo and four user attachable rubber feet assist in making these transitions. Front panel ports are positioned to be easily accessible in either orientation.

Antec Inc., the global leader in high-performance computer components, announces the Three Hundred Two enclosure, the latest addition to their Gaming Series. This sleek, black chassis is designed to handle today's and tomorrow's high-performance systems that are custom built for gamers from the inside-out.

The Three Hundred Two enclosure is perfect for gamers, system integrators and casual builders alike because of its extensive cooling advantages and expandability.

In its 20th year of service, Cooler Master, an industry leading chassis, thermal solution, power supply, peripheral, and accessory manufacturer, today announced the successor to a world renowned chassis line, the Cosmos II. Incomparable in design and specifications, the Cosmos II comes in as among the first of its type. It is an Ultra Tower; a benchmark for all enclosures that exist and all that follow.

Inspired by luxurious supercars, the exterior of the Cosmos II melds aluminum, steel, and mesh into an elegant artistic piece. It utilizes a high-grade aluminum for its primary construction and form. This is supplemented by steel and mesh to add to strength, stability, and overall appeal. It maintains its trademark Cosmos profile and outlook with its reinforced aluminum rails while being further refined for today's advancements in air/water cooling, peripheral support, and styling. Following the supercar feel, the large aluminum side panels swing wide open with a small press of a button. Aluminum sliding doors adorn the well equipped fan and LED control and I/O ports function panel on the top of the case along with the front drive bays. These serve to obscure unsightly cabling and protect drive bays and devices.

Taiwanese company Akasa announced the HDM-23 multi-utility 5.25-inch drive enclosure. This enclosure occupies a 5.25-inch drive bay in your case, and converts it an exposed 3.5-inch bay, or a discrete 2.5-inch bay for SSDs. The exposed 3.5-inch bay can then be used for devices such as fan-controllers in the 3.5-inch form-factor, card readers, such as the one pictured below (not included), or ye olde floppy disk drives. The 3.5-inch bay has mounting holes at the right spots to hold drives in the 2.5-inch form-factor, such as most of today's SSDs. Lastly, there are mount holes on its underside, to which you can attach a 140 mm fan. The enclosure measures 149 x 154 x 42 mm (WxDxH), about as big as an optical drive. It is priced at 880 JPY or about US $11. It will reach stores in late January, 2012.

Got a few blank 5.25" drive bays that will otherwise never hold anything? Chinese company Orico, which specialises in small and medium business data storage solutions, has a few new enclosures for you. The company unveiled its latest 620xSS family of enclosures that fit into multiple (two or three) 5.25-inch drive bays, and provide 3.5-inch hot-swap ready drive bays. The hot-swap bays are key-locked to protect against accidental or unauthorised drive swaps.

Orico introduced an enclosure that converts two 5.25" bays to three hot-swap 3.5" ones, an enclosure that converts three 5.25" bays to four hot-swap 3.5" bays (vertical stacking), and an enclosure that converts three 5.25" bays to five hot-swap 3.5" bays (horizontal stacking). These enclosures are 'dumb', meaning they lack any local storage controller logic, or even port-multiplication logic. They rely entirely on the host for each drive's SATA connectivity. They just share the power connectors between drives. The enclosures, however, are ventilated by exhaust fans. Orico did not give out pricing or availability information.

RAIDON unveiled a new Internal RAID module-MR2020 is in the market. With the aim to industrial market and embedded application, MR2020 accepts two 2.5-inch hard drives to enhance the reliability of the system and supports RAID 1 for instantly data backup.

Considering the advantages of 2.5-inch hard drives such as less noise, heat-resistance, stability, less heat production and space saving etc, RAIDON transfers the hardware backup technology from 3.5-inch hard drives to 2.5-inch. MR2020, an internal storage module designed for working in IPC, product lines, servers and work stations.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of NAND flash storage solutions, today announced the Storage POD Mini, a portable SSD that will change how you think about external storage.

External hard disk drives have made it easy to back-up important data and move data from one machine to another but its performance was limited and always slower than an internal hard drive. Thanks to USB 3.0 and SSD technologies, it is now possible to create a USB storage solution that is smaller, lighter and more rugged than a traditional HDD. A blue anodized, all-aluminum enclosure enables this drive to be both lightweight and rugged yet measure a mere 110 x 68 x 10 mm (roughly the same size as an internal 2.5" HDD; without the enclosure) It fits easily in your pocket and requires no power adapter. It's the perfect travelling companion.

Antec, Inc. is proud to announce the Eleven Hundred, the newest member of the award-winning Gaming Series. The Eleven Hundred marks a new chapter in the Gaming Series with an all-new attractive design and a revamped lineup of expandability, cooling and convenience features. Gamers seeking the highest level of performance will want to take advantage of the Eleven Hundred's support for XL-ATX sized motherboards and four-way GPU configurations - the greatest expandability of any Antec chassis.

The Eleven Hundred features default 200 mm top and 120 mm rear fans and mounts for up to seven more fans for advanced GPU and hard drive cooling - including one 120mm intake fan behind the motherboard tray to cool the CPU. Users can also utilize the included fan power hub to connect up to four 3-pin fans to a single Molex for improved cable management.

SilverStone Technology has now introduced the Treasure TS06, a brand new storage accessory for notebook users which includes an external enclosure supporting one 12.7mm optical drive, and a drive bay converter which allows you to for add an extra 2.5-inch (9.5mm) solid state drive, hard drive, or hybrid drive to a laptop.

The enclosure measures 132 (W) x 17 (H) x 140 (D) mm, has a diamond pattern on its exterior, and comes with a retractable USB 2.0 cable, while the converter bay is 128 (W) x 13(H) x 128 (D) mm, and includes one blue LED showing drive read/write access and a 13pin slim SATA port.

The Treasure TS06 is now shipping and has a recommended retail price tag of 19.50 Euro (VAT not included).

The perfect design and first-class quality of Enermax peripheral products make them an ideal choice for office use. In the last years, the manufacturer successfully established the Aluminium keyboard series Aurora as well as the compact and solid Brick HDD enclosures. With immediate effect, Enermax extends both product lines with new models: The Aurora Lite Wireless and the Brick 3.5" enclosures with USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 are now available.

NZXT proudly presents the Phantom Big-Tower in orange, another special edition of the successful chassis. All new Phantoms, including this variant also come equipped with USB 3.0 connectivity. Additional features of these enclosures are a five channel fan controller with 20W load capacity on each circuit, spacious interior, lighting which may be turned off, elaborate cable management, numerous anti-vibration measures and a water cooling ready design.

The futuristic design of the NZXT Phantom makes it the perfect basis for an extravagant gaming PC as the case specialist has included unique shapes and lines which resembles that of modern high performance sports cars. A front door covers the drive bays, so that the chassis looks perfect, regardless of what type of drives you have installed. Besides the white, black, red and red/white color options, NZXT also offers a special pink variant and now the sleek black and orange version.

Sonnet Technologies, a leader in providing storage systems for professional users of Macintosh, Windows, and UNIX systems in the film, video, and broadcast industries, today announced the Fusion F2QR portable two-drive hardware RAID storage system. Mounted side by side in a tough aluminum enclosure about the size of two stacked CD cases, the diminutive system contains two, 2.5-inch, 1TB hard drives.

Based on the multiple-award-winning Fusion F2, a portable two-drive RAID SATA storage system recognized for its performance, reliability, whisper-quiet operation, and shock-resistant characteristics, this compact device adds a built-in hardware RAID controller for configuring the drives; a quad interface with eSATA, FireWire(R) 800, and USB 2.0 ports for flexible compatibility; and a greater storage capacity. The Fusion F2QR delivers great performance with up to 160 MB/sec read and 100 MB/sec write data transfer rates, and is bus-powered by a FireWire port on the computer regardless the interface used.

Addonics Technologies today announced the Addonics 2.5" and 3.5" Snap-In Disk Array removable drive systems that are ideal solutions for increasing hard drive storage in both small and large computing systems.

The Addonics 2.5" Snap-In Disk Array is a high density removable hard drive system that supports installing up to four 2.5" SATA hard drives or SSDs into one standard 5.25" drive bay. This compact form factor makes it an ideal solution for increasing hard drive storage in small computers, mini ATX systems or for applications that require a large number of drives.

Post production pros know that you can never have enough fast, cool and reliable storage. Dedicated to serving the Apple Mac and creative professional audio/video (A/V) markets, G-Technology by Hitachi is demoing its first 4TB hard drives at IBC 2011 (Stand #7.D12a) in its two-drive, RAID 0, G-RAID solution. Continuing to develop innovative and creative storage solutions for those looking to push creativity beyond the limits, the 8TB G-RAID demo shows how G-Technology is making digital production faster, super-sized and affordable, giving users a competitive edge in the demanding entertainment and film industry.

SilverStone launched the DS321 dual-3.5" drive enclosure. It was first spotted at this year's Computex event, in June. The DS321 can holt two 3.5" SATA hard drives or SSDs as standalone or RAID volumes, with RAID modes including 0 (performance) and 1 (data redundancy). A limitation here is that the enclosure supports drives only up to 2 TB in size. The enclosure connects to the host over USB 3.0 SuperSpeed interface, almost eliminating the interface bottleneck, with 5 Gb/s of bandwidth to conduct its business with the host. Measuring 182 x 123 x 81 mm, the enclosure uses an external power brick, and keeps the drives cool using its 40 mm exhaust fan that can spin at speeds of up to 2800 RPM. Set to reach stores in Europe by the 16th of this month, the SilverStone DS321 is priced at €59.70 (without VAT).

Today, BitFenix is proud to introduce the latest entry in their critically-acclaimed lineup of gaming enclosures. Dubbed Merc, this mid-tower ATX design offers killer features and styling at an unbelievable price point, making it the ideal case for gamers on a budget.

"Packed with premium features and BitFenix design DNA, users will see that we didn't cut any corners with Merc," says BitFenix Product Manager David Jarlestedt. "From the clean yet bold design, to the black interior coating, quality black cabling, and robust connectivity, cooling and cable management features, gamers will be hard-pressed to find a better value enclosure in this segment."

Village Instruments ran a snap poll on Facebook to see if the Mac user community is interested in a graphics card enclosure that makes use of the Thunderbolt IO interconnect. The response was positive, and so the company decided to work on such a device. The enclosure holds a PCI-Express x16 slot along with a variety of miscellaneous I/O connectors. It connects to the latest generation of Macs and Macbooks over the 10 Gb/s Thunderbolt interconnect. It will power the graphics card using an external power brick. Village Instruments isn't new to such devices, the company currently sells ViDock, a device that does the same over ExpressCard interface. ExpressCard's bandwidth is much lower than that of Thunderbolt, but it still gets the job done in running a graphics card, even if not at its top performance. The ExpressCard ViDock is pictured below.