LaCie gets minimalist with its latest external hard drives
By Nilay Patel 
posted Dec 6th 2007 2:28PM
posted Dec 6th 2007 2:28PM
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looks nice. to bad these drives will fail in 3-6 months.
3-6 months??? Doubtful. I've had my 500GB Lacie since Q1 of 2007 no problems, you my firend have been misinformed. Anyway the design is pimp would love for this to accent my custom colorware 17" Macbook Pro. But why not 500GB model? 320GB to 1TB seems to be skipping across the buyers spectrum.
320GB for $119 to 1TB for $399. They range from 320GB to 1TB, not just 2 sizes ;)
Um, there's also 500GB and 750GB models. Generally the word ranging denotes a range.
Uh, Misinformed? Beef Supreme i had 4 lacie porsche 250gb drive. all of which ceased to work within 6 months. lesson learned. best of luck to you on your dirve though.
you can say that for pretty much any electronics these days, quality is a luxury few companies try to attain anymore. It is all about the profit margin and the next item in the list to suck another buck.
you can say that for pretty much any electronics these days, quality is a luxury few companies try to attain anymore. It is all about the profit margin and the next item in the list to suck another buck.
I have four of the Porsche designed external HDs (3x250GB 1x500GB)and love them! Two of them I have had for more than a year with no problem at all. This new design looks even better. The major problem with these and the Porsche designed...they don't come in anything but USB and I now only need Firewire and eSATA drives at this point. One other design issue I hope has changed: auto power on/off with the computer like the Western Digital externals.
Cue the chorus and killing monkeys.
It's nice to get to an article and know exactly the (sometimes obvious) joke to make, but see someone say it better than you ever could.
that. is. sexy.
I find an overwhelming sense of desire for rectangular shaped boxes too.
I just wish La Cie would include software like Maxtor. I want a "one touch" solution in a simple, efficient design.
LaCie does include one-click backup software; it lets you select folders on your computer and click a 'copy over' button. I can't imagine Maxtor's software is much more convenient or more powerful.
If you're on Windows and want a more elegant backups, the Microsoft Download Center has a decent syncing tool called SyncToy that's very user-friendly for getting files on to EHDs.
Beautiful looking enclosure for sure, but no Firewire 800 or eSATA == no sale.
Seconded.
You can say that again. Man, this is 2007 (almost 2008), when are these people going to wake up!
I love the style of the HD but reliability problems of the past are scaring me a little. Truly beautiful though...just add the damn high speed interfaces! (FW800 or eSata)
Wrote LaCie sales and asked about a firewire version. Was told that one is coming, but no date as yet.
Thats pretty cool, I wonder if they sell it as a seperate enclosure. I have many spare Hard drives flopping around and that looks pretty sweet.
They also have the 750GB and 500GB
500GB:
http://www.lacie.com/ca/products/product.htm?pid=11014
750GB:
http://www.lacie.com/ca/products/product.htm?pid=11015
The drive also comes with 2 year warranty.
What is also missing in this article is that the 320GB and 500GB only has 8MB of cache, then the 750 and 1TB has 16MB of cache
The problem with a warranty is that it does nothing when the drive dies and you lose all your data. It's nice that they will replace the drive, but it's the data that I care about.
I've had several of their inexpensive Porsche designs drives, and have found them prone to overheating. (They have a grill and a spot for a fan, but mine don't have fans. They also don't automatically spin down after X minutes on inactivity.) This design looks like a shiny black version of the "gunmetal" plastic Porsche version; hopefully they included a fan and a better controller board. Can't bitch too much, though, since the drive & enclosure cost less than a naked drive.
Well you can always open up the drive case, remove the drive and slide in a nice WesternDigital or something. :)
I just want the enclosure too. It looks very stylish and absolutely shmexy.
Up to 1TB for only $399? Wow, that's good considering the prices of other 1TB drives out there, plus it'll look sexy while doing it's job, nice combo.
I'm not so sure a shiny, black box can really be "designed". I guess shiny and black can be designed, but they are only a tiny step above primitive designs.
Mmm, I was thinking this too. I wonder what Poulton gets for doing that? And does anyone else have to think of chickens?
It usually takes a good designer to tell a company, "Hey, chill out with all the LEDs, molded plastic and dull, gray boxes. Try something clean and simple."
My god... its full of data...
"If I had a million dollars..."
it's the all spark!
Yeah. I like it. And it is surprisingly cheap, for such a "designer" drive. However, no sale for me without FW800. Otherwise my Time Machine backups will take forever.
Looks like a fat black Wii.
It is nice looking, but these fanless drives get super hot if you stack them. I had two of their Porsche drives and two of them stacked together got so hot, I couldn't even touch them!
I like the new WD MyBook redesign better.
My fiance has had a LaCie 30GB external drive for years now, and she's never had a problem with it.
ALLSPARK???? LOL.... you are hilarious. That is why I read this stuff. 30% for the reviews and 70% for the comments. lol
Are you sure it's 30/70, and not, say, 35/65?
By the way, the all spark comment displayed an utter lack of comedic value.
January? Arse. I've had this on order since early November (in the UK), and was wondering why the estimated ship date kept slipping and the LaCie website had no mention of it.
It's very cheap; I hope it's as much of a workhorse as my LaCie d2.
USB is less expensive than FireWire is less expensive than USB/FireWire
Check the website.
While this new Poulton designed drive is USB only, LaCie have other models that have a variety of interfaces.
As for drives failing:
- disconcerting to say the least, bu no vendor guarantees data recovery if a drive fails
Here is a guide to commenting on future drive announcements:
- Vendor _______ sucks, and I'm going to purchase a drive from vendor _______; I've heard they are much better but I don't have any personal experience. My original drive failed after ________ days/weeks/months and that was my only copy of my valuable data.
- Vendor ______ is great! I've never lost anything after several years of happy operation.
- Buying a name brand drive is for losers. Simply buy a bare drive from ______ and slap it into a cool box you can purchase anywhere.
- Anybody can design a __________ (pick your favorite color) disk drive. What's so cool about this one?
The design looks very nice, except for that big dorky "LaCie" badge on the left-hand side. Couldn't they have minimalized that a tad? My guess is that Neil Poulton wanted the drive completely clean, but some executive who had his tie on too tight and who didn't have any design instincts in a single bone in his body, wanted the LaCie name "stamped" somewhere, which of course, ruins the looks to whatever degree.
The design is so clean otherwise, instead they could've placed the name in VERY small capital letters (spaced apart further than normal) on the front in some really cool font, and then had them light up in blue. That would've looked much nicer than that tacky, misplaced badge.
With that said, I hope these drives last longer than their warranty. The drives in my laptops have lasted much longer than that.
We've had a few LaCie drives at work, and ontop of failures and buggyness, their tech support is poor and send us back partially working devices. It's also important to note they span alot of data across many drives, with zero redundancy.