Buffalo today announced that it has started shipping its new MiniStation Cobalt USB 3.0 portable hard disk drives onto the market.

Using the new USB 3.0 bus standard, Buffalo claim that its new drives are 10 times faster than similar USB 2.0 devices, but we know (as do they) that the actual performance improvements are really closer to 3 or 4 times faster in real-world terms, at this stage of the game, as USB 3.0 develops and matures.

While there is no word on what type of storage is inside the shiny new USB 3.0 hard drive enclosure be it SSD or HDD, the MiniStation Cobalt HD-PEU3 drives will begin shipping next month in capacities up to 640GB. Pricing information is not available yet, but don't expect them to be super cheap since they are based around the new SuperSpeed USB platform and will ask a premium price, no doubt.