ADATA is touting its new HE720 as the world's thinnest external hard drive. The company has managed to squeeze 500 GB of storage and a speedy USB 3.0 connection into a brushed metal enclosure measuring in at a mere 8.9 millimeters thick—or just over a third of an inch.

We love superlatives—and right now USB 3.0's super speed is a great one. Also nice? Anything world's smallest. That's what PQI is claiming of their newest flashdrive. But is this thing even relevant anymore?

LaCie's got their hands on what they say is the smallest current USB 3.0 flash drive—about the size of a pack of gum. (Clearly not Orbit gum!). Sizes up to 120GB, and speeds up to 260MB/s.

Cramming 500GB of storage into that molten silver casing, LaCie's design partnership with Philippe Starck has gone USB 3.0 for faster data transfers—though of course it also works with USB 2.0 ports, too.

USB 3.0 is fast. Faster than standard 7200 RPM disks can handle. So how do you make external storage faster to better fill up the transfer pipe? By putting an SSD inside.

USB 3.0 adoption's been slow in a very chicken-and-egg way. Manufacturers don't want to increase costs without consumer interest, and there's little consumer interest without computers being able to use it. Iomega's solving the consumer half of the problem.

Seagate's BlackArmor PS110 USB3 drive kit brings USB3 to laptops without USB3. And your transfer speeds will be 3 times what they were through USB2. If you weren't excited about USB3 before, you should be.

This is so cool: Unitek's new adapter will connect any spare SATA hard drive to a PC using the 5 Gbps USB 3.0 standard. And it only costs $48. There's only one little itty bitty problem: