Not long ago Western Digital announced the PiDrive which was received by the community pretty warmly despite doubts on its real value.
What is the PiDrive? A 314GB disk (do you get the Pi part?) with a customised firmware to allow it to be optimised to run off a Raspberry Pi USB port with no need for an external power supply. Sorry to say that but that’s just about it! At the cost of £27 (The special promo price!) you get a 320GB with, I suspect, some sectors removed to make it Pi enough and that runs off a USB port.
Running external enclosures with 2.5″ drives just off a USB port isn’t necessarily something new and the £39 retail price was never too appealing especially as the drive doesn’t even come with the USB 3.0 cable need. I wasn’t surprised to see that in the end the PiDrive faded away pretty quickly from the news.
In a new move to promote the PiDrive, WDLabs teamed up with OSMC to create a kit which
“… lets you take your Raspberry Pi and media collection with you on the go”
The kits comes with:
- White Colour with OSMC Logo Screen Print
- 314GB USB Hard Drive
- Sandisk 8GB Class 10 SD Card
- 3A Power Supply (Powers Raspberry Pi & HDD) inc. Both EU & UK heads
- Cables & Mounting Media
It retails for £79.99 as a limited edition run that you can get directly from OSMC or that you could grab from ModMyPi via their e-shop
Is this how the PiDrive will finally get to be popular? Time will tell but I believe this is at least a step in the right direction as you can now have a product customised with a rather specific purpose in mind and most importantly with all the necessary cabling required to actually use it straight away (no I did not have a USB 3.0 cable at home when I got the drive). The price is still not too inviting and if anything I hope that it will come down instead of up after this limited run.