The
USB ORB is a storage drive that uses a 2.2 GB disk. Since, it’s USB, it’s
fairly easy to set up on any machine with a USB port. It can be used for
carrying large files like graphics, multimedia presentations, CAD/CAM, MP3
audio, MPEG video, etc. So advertising agencies, studios, printing houses, etc,
which need to transfer huge files would find it useful.
The 5,400 rpm drive comes in an attractive transparent
blue-green plastic case, and supports maximum transfer rates of 12.2 MB/sec.
When installed, it gets assigned a drive letter, and you can use it like an
ordinary hard drive.
As it functions like an ordinary drive, you can actually
install applications on it and run them as if they were running from a regular
hard drive. Of course, being a removable drive, you have to close any files that
are directly opened from it before you pull out the disk.
Besides the one we checked out, the drive exists in three
other variants–internal EIDE, and internal and external SCSI. All drives come
with the same set of tools–software for data backup, a tool that gives you an
Explorer-like interface to access your files (you can do this through Windows
Explorer too), ORB Tools, etc. ORB Tools didn’t work with the USB drive, so we
couldn’t check out what it was about.
The drive costs Rs 14,000 and the price for one disk is Rs
2,000. A pack of 10 disks turns out to be cheaper at
Rs 15,000.