Often external hard drives are rather unremarkable, but this time around LaCie has a little something different in store. LaCie's new d2 Thunderbolt drive has not one, but two special features, starting with (you guessed it) Thunderbolt support. There are already a fair number of Thunderbolt drives already on the market, but what sets this drive apart is the upgradeable storage design.
The device has a replacement PCB, which has a built-in SSD, and while it may only be 128 GB in size, it does support transfer speeds of up to 1150 MB/s – that's staggering, especially for an external drive. The standard hard drive that's built-in has transfer speeds of up to 220 MB/s.
When mounting the drive to your PC through the Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 interface (and the d2 upgrade module is installed), you'll see it mounted as two separate drives; one is the SSD, and the other is the HDD.
As usual, LaCie has also built the drive with a full-aluminum enclosure along with vibration-dampening rubbers both inside the enclosure and under the foot. This should result in cooler operation and elimination of the 'vibrating desk' symptom of using an external hard drive.
The drives will cost between $299 and $499, with capacities ranging from 3 TB to 6 TB. The d2 SSD upgrade module will set you back an additional $299. Availability is slated for this month.
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