Battery Powered Firewire Drives Now Shipping

by , 3:00 PM EST, March 29th, 2002

FirewireDirect.com is now shipping battery powered Firewire drives. The Spark III EmPowered is a Firewire hard drive designed with a built-in Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery for complete mobile operation. The battery charges automatically, and switches between AC power to battery power without skipping a beat. According to FirewireDirect.com:

FirewireDirect.com, Inc., today announced a new line of FireWire portable hard drives, powered by a Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery and boasting up to 40 Gigabytes (GB) of storage capacity, but small enough to fit in an open hand or pocket. The most mobile design yet in a complete FireWire storage solution, the new Spark III EmPowered (Spark EP) will run on battery power for ultimate portability on laptops, desktop computers and video cameras and DV devices.

Demonstrated last week for the first time publicly at the South By Southwest Interactive show, the drive created a buzz among portable digital media users impressed by it’s tiny size, titanium style panels and high speed Oxford 911 based ATA-5 FireWire interface. The drive is available in configurations of 10, 20, 30 and 40GB and as the latest in FirewireDirect’s series of high performance FireWire 2.5” Enclosures.

The Spark EP is unique and a first of its kind in its use of a rechargeable Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) battery that will enable the drive to power itself, making this FireWire storage solution truly plug and play for iLINK (4pin) computers and laptops that would normally require power supplied by AC in other portable drives. A self-powered drive will run without power cords on any system with FireWire/iLINK.

You can find more information about the Spark III EP release at the FirewireDirect.com Web site. The 40GB Spark II EP drive is available for US$389.00.

FirewireDirect.com