Just in time for Macworld, taking place in San Francisco, Lacie announced several new products including the F800 RAID subsystem that allows video professionals to store up to two TByte of data. The 4-bay array supports RAID levels 0, 0+1, 5 and RAID 5+hot spare in an aluminum enclosure with FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 interfaces for use on PCs or Macs. The system will be available this spring, according to Lacie.

Other announcements include d2 DVD+/-RW Double Layer drives, which enable direct disc labeling drive for both Macs and PCs, a new Ethernet Disk network drive with one TByte capacity simultaneous access for up to 25 users as well as the Ethernet Disk mini with up to 500 GByte shared storage space as a more economical network storage solution.

Lacie also jumps into the booming USB drive market: Instead of Flash, the device however uses a harddrive and is able to plug directly into multi-standard television sets for instant playback of stored movies, music or photos. The drive comes in 40 GByte or 80 GByte capacities and will be available this month. (THG)