LaCie Hard Disk, Design by Neil Poulton
LaCie has become a premium supplier of storage products, offering all sorts of value-added hard drives and portable solutions. Unfortunately, LaCie did not choose wisely when it came to the name of the drive it sent us, which it refers to simply as the “LaCie Hard Disk, Design by Neil Poulton.” (Neil Poulton is an award-winning technology designer, but most consumers have never heard of him.) LaCie offers two versions of this drive, one that connects only via USB 2.0, the other with a triple interface—USB 2.0, FireWire 1394a and eSATA. We reviewed the latter, though we received both models. The triple-interface drive is priced about $30 higher than the comparable USB-only models.
It’s Got the Looks
The design is straightforward—in fact, the LaCie Hard Disk is rectangular and looks like a brick. Still, it was clearly designed by…well, a designer and not an engineer. It’s made of glossy black plastic for a visual impact, but it’s a bit sensitive to fingerprints. All connectors are on the back and the company logo is on one side, so most sides are solid black. But the device does have some eye candy: The activity LED on the front is actually installed on the bottom to illuminate the surface area it stands on (see image below).
Features and Performance
We prefer the triple-interface version of the LaCie for performance reasons: the USB 2.0 connection is limited to 32 MB/s read throughput and less than 27 MB/s write speed. This is acceptable for occasional use, but by no means quick enough to copy hundreds of gigabytes. Using FireWire 1394a speeds it up to 40 MB/s reads and 30 MB/s writes. However, eSATA is the best choice, giving you up to 85 MB/s reads and writes. Access time is always around 13.5 ms.
Power Consumption
The LaCie Hard Disk showed the least peak power consumption (measured at the plug) as well as the second-lowest drive idle power requirement. We like its low standby power requirement of only 2 W—it doesn’t create a lot of heat and you won’t notice it on your energy bill. Another nice feature: the unit switches off completely when you shut down the host PC, and power consumption drops to near zero. For even greater control, you can use the power switch, available on only a few external drives.
LaCie offers models with 500 GB, 750 GB and 1 TB, which is the one we looked at. The 500 GB triple-interface drive costs $139.99 and the terabyte model is $199.99. LaCie’s warranty is limited to two years (Seagate and SimpleTech offer five and three years, respectively).
The light of this drive’s activity LED is noticeable only by reflection on the surface. It looks a bit like the light of a bar-code scanner.
LaCie Software
Compared with the other vendors, LaCie does not add a lot of value. The LaCie Backup Software is just a simple copy utility—every backup requires creation of a new folder, name and index value. Each backup is a full backup, and there’s no scheduling—just the option to start the backup with Windows, meaning the backup process will be executed when you boot up your PC.
The following images come from the USB 2.0-only version of the drive.
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Neil Poulton is really something. He designed a black brick.
Neil Poulton is really something. He designed a black brick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick .
Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing as I read over the story.
Heya,
A decent article to read. I've been looking at externals for a while as I have the USB powered wallet sized ones, in the 250gig size range, and I really enjoy them (even if their speeds are low). 1tb level stuff certainly is different though when you're likely dealing with gigs of data at a time. At least I would be. And I also like that they covered power consumption. A lot of the `green' things being offered don't live up to that when you actually measure them on the wall. I'm surprised that WD doesn't ever hit 0 when you even switch it off. That's terrible. Must have an LED or something that stays on all the time. Dunno about others, but I think it would be stupid to spend the $ over night every night for the 0.4watts it's doing nothing with. May seem like nothing but that adds up over a few years to the cost of that drive, making it more expensive than the others by far. Bull crap.
Ways to improve this article: Tear open those cases. Let's see which ones are durable. Which ones give you ease of access in case something goes wrong or if you want to switch things up in there. Also, what actual DRIVES are being used. A lot of companies boast different names but still use the SAME drive often. It'd be nice to know exactly what's in there, instead of just presuming they're using a green drive for example. Why assume? Open that box!
And honestly, looks matter when it comes to externals. Having a HUGE vibrating box that is NOISY is not something I want to drop $130~170 on. And so far, all the above drives fail at that. There are far more attractive options out there. Look at the phantom drives for example.
Very best,
0.4[W] * 24[hr] * 365[days] * 3[years] * 0.10[USD/kWH] / 1000[W/kW] =
$1.05 (for 3 years, in standby constantly) hardly your claim of making it more expensive than the others. Even if the difference in power consumption was 5W constantly the difference would only be $13.14 over 3 years.
what? no ICY DOCKs?
STAY AWAY from the 1TB MY Book Home edition. I bought that piece of equipement about 6 months ago and had nothing but trouble. First of the ESATA port is not working at all. Seems like WD hates the Jmicron controller that is on most of ASUS mobo for Esata. The Firewire port isn't very stable also and to top it all, you have to disconnect the drive to let your PC boot up. The drive will stop your computer from booting durint post. Not worth the hassle...
I returned that dammed thing after weeks of research on the net, fiddling with the BIOS and one clean reformat
I have had the same experience as Aieden: my eSata never worked. The USB and 1394a work OK. My MSI P45 mobo works with Jmicron controller. Apparantly MyBook doesn't like it.
what does everyone think of the AZiO ENC311SU31 (eSATA usb external hard drive enclosure), I was thinking of picking one up.
[citation][nom]thewondererus[/nom]Neil Poulton is really something. He designed a black brick.
Funny, I was thinking the exact same thing as I read over the story. [/citation]
So true. That is exactly what my girlfriend said about it
Wonder if the Seagate tools are finally x64 compatible... doubt it as the FreeAgent still isn't. It'd be nice to review the compatibility of the enclosed software (or at least mention it).
I have a similar issue with my Seagate (not the one tht was reviewed) and eSATA on my ASUS board, although the firewire works fine.
I love the 'black brick' design! so much better than those normal ones.
On a side note - is any of those mentioned solutions capable of having its harddrive replaced?
I know the my book isn't - I'm using the electronics from a 500gb model to power a seagate 250gb drive now, but it's not possible to take the thing apart without breaking the plastic casing.
hhahaha designed by Neil Poulton
give me a break, its a rectangular prism
"design" ROFL
Hey it is a design!
Someone did design a lada samara or golf I as well even though they were just boxes on wheels. Design can be simple. Sometimes simple is even the best option. The old box like audi 100 looks a lot better than the equvivalent ford scorpio.
recently picked up two of the buffalo drivestations 1tb, comes with a fully licensed copy of the memeo autosync backup software aswell as a 30 day trial of their internet disk online storage.
ive read quite a few reviews saying how the external drives arent quite as reliable as their internal colleagues so im using one as storage and the other as a backup of the first using the memeo software which happily chugged away checking that everything was as it should be.
also comes with control software for putting drives into power saving mode which works fine although without the tools to test i cant say what the power consumption is or by how much it changes between the modes.
so far no problems with them, was very pleased to see that they have wd drives inside and also support 'turbousb', although im not 100% sure how effective this is.
only down point is the single connection for usb2 but thats fine for me.
What are the average noise levels during operation? Those small fans can really become loud...
Same experience as Aieden:
My PC has a GA-P35-DQ6 MoBo and the 1TB MY Book Home edition never did work with e-SATA. And indeed when I connect the My Book with the PC it prevents the PC from starting up.
MY Book Home edition seems to be rubbish.......
UPDATE:
I found new firmware (WD_MB_Home_1028_1_02.zip)on the website of WD and installed it.
Now the problem seems to be solved!
I've got the WD 1TB My Book Home Edition. The case is designed to fall over, ie - it is top heavy, and is very easy to tip over. Not good for hard drives to be dropped. Head crash anyone? I wondered if it had been designed by marketing, or possibly by artists, instead of by a mechanical engineer?
It also prevented my newer PCs from booting. You can fix that by changing the USB configuration in your BIOS to disallow booting from USB disk drives, if my rusty memory is correct.
Chris
"when I connect the My Book with the PC it prevents the PC from starting up."
When I leave my car in neutral and walk away, it rolls into things. Stupid car!! ;-)
Like cjshaker said, that's a BIOS boot device setting on your PC, not the drive. If your PC is configured to boot from USB, can't blame that particular "problem" on WD MyBook, or any other drive. Booting from USB is sometimes a good thing, like booting your PC off a thumb drive loaded with diagnostics software, anti-virus scanners, etc. But if the drive is not actually set up to boot from, it often just hangs your PC. A "smarter" BIOS will recognize the drive isn't bootable and either skip that device or at least nastygram you.