If you're into high-class fashion, LaCie has something for you. The company has come out with two new external hard drives by famed French designer Philippe Starck, who makes everything from furniture to clothes to luggage.
The front surface of the new LaCie desktop external hard drive responds to a finger's touch.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)Other than the fact that they offer extra storage, the LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive and the LaCie Starck Mobile Hard Drive come with a bit of fashion flair. Both are housed in a distinctive-looking, sturdy aluminum case that protects the internal drives from shocks.
While the LaCie Starck Mobile Hard Drive seems to be just a plain yet good-looking compact USB external hard drive, the LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive features a curvy front that responds to the touch of a finger. It also has a status LED light that shines an orange plus sign--Starck's signature symbol--on the surface.
There's not much you can do with the drive's novelty touch-sensitive surface, unfortunately. It can be programmed to launch an application, such as Firefox or Word, when you touch the front of the drive. But to do this, you will need to install LaCie Destkop Manager software, which runs all the time in the background. I found this sort of a waste for a function that's not really useful or necessary. But obviously fashion isn't always about necessity and functionality.
The LaCie Destkop Manager software will also help format the hard drive to work with a Windows, Mac, or Linux platform. The drives also come with LaCie Backup Assistant software, which can automatically back up the computer's data onto the drive.
Other than that, the LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive is very much like a brick. It also generates some sort of vibration during operation, reducing its suitability for sitting on top of your desk. It only comes with a USB port, which is rather disappointing as this is the slowest connection. Other desktop external hard drives often come with FireWire and eSATA connections.
LaCie's two new external hard drives are available now. The LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive costs $130 for the 1TB version and $250 for the 2TB version. The LaCie Starck Mobile Hard Drive comes in 320GB and 500GB versions, which cost $100 and $140, respectively.
LaCie has been busy. Just a little while ago, it joined the cloud storage market by acquiring Wuala, and now it's expanding its network storage products.
The company announced Monday a significant upgrade to its "Big"-branded line of products with the LaCie 2Big and LaCie 5Big network-attached storage devices. These two products come with advanced features, comprehensive backup support, and flexible storage expansion.
The LaCie 5Big Network storage device.
(Credit: LaCie)The LaCie 5Big comes with five hard drive bays and offers storage up to 10TB. Its hard drive can be set up in seven different RAID configurations. It also supports Apple's Time Machine, available in Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
In addition, the LaCie 5Big provides improved multimedia server capabilities, allowing users to play multimedia content from the NAS device through a UPnP and DLNA-compatible devices such as a PS3 or Xbox 360. It's also works as an iTunes server, which provides iTunes users access the NAS device from the application interface.
The Lacie 2Big, on the other hand, is a two-bay RAID device that provides up to 4TB of storage. The device supports Windows Active Directory, letting it fit well in businesses that have a centralized domain server. Apart from supporting Time Machine, the LaCie 2Big also ships with client licenses of Genie Backup Manager Pro for Windows and Intego Backup Manager Pro for Mac.
Both the new devices are available now with starting prices of $320 and $800 for the 2TB 2Big and the 2.5TB 5Big, respectively.
I got my hands on LaCie's new external hard drive, the 2big Dual, and it's not just big, but heavy too.
The 2big Dual features a tool-less hard-drive bay for easy access and maintenance.
(Credit: LaCie)In fact, it's arguably the heaviest two-bay external hard drive I've run into. The drive is not ugly, however. Designed by Neil Poulton, the drive, though big and rugged, has an elegant industrial look with aluminum casing and a removable base for the vertical position.
The drive comes with eSATA and USB 2.0 connections and six RAID-based setups for hard drives that can be easily set with the switch on the back of the device.
The 2big Dual also features an easy-maintenance design, with the hard drives easily accessible and replaceable. It can support any internal SATA hard drive, but comes in three preconfigured versions, including 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB that cost $320, $400, and $530, respectively. All these versions ship with a three-year warranty and EMC Retrospect Express backup software for both PCs and Macs.
You can get one now or check back at CNET.com for an in-depth review to see how its performance stacks up to its big and bold design.
LaCie has put another Triple Interface external hard drive on the market today, and although it looks very similar to the rest of their line (Neil Poulton also designed this one), there's one striking difference: they've included an eSATA port in addition to Firewire 400 and USB 2.0.
External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment eliminates the need to translate data between the computer and the storage drive which speeds up the process to almost triple the speed of Firewire 400 and USB 2.0. We're hoping it'll usher in a new era of hard drives featuring this faster bus interface.
The drive is available now in 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB capacities.
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LaCie)
LaCie has been pimping its designer good looks for the last several months, but the company also wants us to know that it's not just another pretty face. To wit: It just debuted a 1-terabyte external hard drive that emphasizes its power and capacity more than appearance. (It's just an upright black box, a la 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
The drive is the largest of three externals LaCie is releasing, according to Engadget, the others being another desktop model of 250GB to 500GB in size and a mobile disk that ranges from 80GB to 320GB. All of which is well and good, but we'll always have a soft spot for the "Golden Disk."
LaCie's LaCinema Premier drive puts your digital media on your TV.
(Credit: LaCie)As good as the Apple TV 2.0 is, it's still pretty limited on what sort of videos it can stream from a networked computer--if it hasn't been imported into iTunes, you're pretty much out of luck. If you're looking for something with more file format flexibility--and the simplicity of drag-and-drop operation--the LaCie LaCinema Premier may be just the ticket.
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LaCie)
This is apparently how to market a hard drive in today's computer peripherals market: Hire a French designer, put his name on a black box, and add a strip of blue light to it. Voila! Another work of art.
That's what LaCie has done with the latest of its designer collection, following the "Little Disk" by Sam Hecht and the "Golden Disk" by Ora-Ito. The new LED-adorned offering apparently foregoes a unique name, going simply by "LaCie Hard Disk" by Neil Poulton and offered in sizes ranging from 320GB to 1TB. (The marketing people, however, couldn't resist adding the cheesy phrase "Feel The Glow" underneath it.)
If LaCie is going to pay a lot of money for name-brand designers, we'd just as soon see it come up with another cephalopod like the "Huby."
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LaCie)
Being art lovers ourselves, we appreciate LaCie's attention to aesthetics in some of its latest products. After all, it's not easy to make a hard drive look like something that belongs ni a museum.
That's exactly what it did last week with the debut of its "Golden Disk," by French designer Ora-Ito. In our humble opinion, however, its second attempt isn't quite so successful: The "Little Disk" from designer Sam Hecht does sport a glossy finish but, aside from its removable cap, it looks pretty much like a dark-chocolate box.
The portable drive, which comes in 30GB, 80GB and 120GB (pictured here), seems to take the concept of "clean lines" a bit too far as far as we're concerned. But LaCie's marketing department deserves high marks for effort, even posting a YouTube video of Hecht discussing the new line.
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LaCie)
LaCie announced yesterday its new Big Disk Extreme+ desktop hard drive, a fairly standard external drive whose standout feature is the massive capacity. It's available in 1-terabyte, 1.5-terabyte, and 2-terabyte capacities, starting at $350 ($850 for the 2TB drive). The design is LaCie's classic Neil Poulton d2 look: brushed gray body with a blue programmable one-touch button mounted on the front. Connection options include two FireWire 800 ports, one FireWire 400 port, and one USB 2.0 port. It comes bundled with LaCie's 1-Click Backup software, Silverkeeper (backup software for Macs), and two versions of EMC Retrospect Express software for Windows and Mac PCs. As usual, LaCie is targeting the drive at video pros who need fast transfer speeds and huge capacities. Check back soon for a review at CNET.com.
LaCie unveiled six new products to its storage lineup today, ranging from a Blu-ray drive, to a biometric hard drive, to a RAID array.
The d2 Blu-Ray drive is an external optical drive that works with both Windows and Mac machines, via either FireWire or USB connection. It comes bundled with Roxio burning software and a 50GB Blu-ray disc. The drive reads and writes (and rewrites) 25GB or 50GB BD-R, BD-RE (rewritable), DVD+/-RW DL, and CD+/-RW. It's available for preorder for $1,149.
The Quadra Hard Drive.
(Credit: LaCie)The Quadra Hard Drive sports four interface options: USB, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA. This drive also supports both Windows and Mac computers and comes with EMC Retrospect Express Backup Software. Only the 500GB version is currently available ($299), but LaCie plans to release more capacity options in the spring.
The d2 SAFE Hard Drive.
(Credit: LaCie)The d2 SAFE Hard Drive is a triple-interface (USB, FW400, FW800) that you can lock and unlock with the swipe of a finger. The built-in biometric fingerprint reader lets up to five users register two fingers each. The SAFE Hard Drive also employs 128-bit AES data encryption for further security. The 500GB version is available immediately for $299.
The new version of the LaCie Ethernet Disk Mini offers a Gigabit Ethernet connection for even faster data transfers (the previous version offers 10/100 Ethernet). In addition to a network connector, it offers two USB ports for a direct connection or for storage expansion via additional external hard drives. It comes in three capacities: 250GB ($199), 320GB ($249), and 500GB ($299). With the release of the new Ethernet Disk Mini, LaCie is dropping the prices on its previous version to $119, $149, and $199, respectively. The Ethernet Big Disk is basically the same product, but with larger capacities: 640GB ($349) and 1TB ($499).
The Ethernet Disk RAID drive.
(Credit: LaCie)Finally, the Ethernet Disk RAID is a RAID 5 network-attached storage drive that offers support for Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, four levels of RAID security (0, 1, 10, and 5+spare), and four hot-swappable SATA drives. It sports two Gigabit LAN ports and 2 USB 2.0 ports and comes with a system backup and recovery client for Windows. The 1TB version costs $999 and the 2TB version costs $1,299--not a bad deal. Both are available immediately.
All of these products will debut at MacWorld next week.
