Iomega, a maker of removable storage technology, has introduced in Hong Kong a high-capacity, portable hard-disk drive which it is pushing to become a standard storage medium in digital audio and video entertainment applications.
The Peerless drive is essentially an IBM 6.35-centimetre Travelstar hard disk used in notebooks dressed in a hard, sealed casing, so it can take more abuse. According to Iomega, the cartridge can survive a 76cm fall.
The Peerless is Iomega's fourth in its highest-capacity removable storage product line. The others are the Zip 120 Megabyte drive, the Jaz 1 Gigabyte drive and the Clik, a 40-megabyte drive.
Iomega became a household name in the late 90s as a result of the success of its Zip product - a 120MB alternative to the 1.4MB floppy disk.
Richard Lim, country director of Iomega Asia South and Hong Kong, said the Peerless would be the next Zip.
'There is more and more data for both consumers and businesses to store and back up every day due to the Internet and e-mail, games and digital audio and video files. There is a need for a really big, removable storage capacity that works easily with PCs and Macs,' he said.
Mr Lim did not see the functions of the Zip, Jaz and Peerless products overlapping. 'There will always be Zip users as it's a floppy-drive alternative. Peerless is for high-capacity backup or storing of files, movies, games.'