LaCie Desktop Hard Disk 320 GB

...external hard drive was the Lacie Desktop Hard Disk 320 GB.

Having brought it online for just under £50, that instantly stuck me as a bargain. Purchased approximately 18 months ago, that was a steal. Naturally, with the passing of time and the increasing availability of external hard drives, the price of this items has began to fall, as is the case with all types of technology.

Once plugged in and inserted into a USB drive, ...
...need formatting if you required to move extremely large files (over a couple of GB in size) but that's easy enough when you go to My Computer and right-click the drive. (I'm aware that some technophobes will already be lost on what I'm talking about here!)

It's proved reliable for me since the day I brought it, with copious video clips still sat on there, along with my gargantuan music collection. It's appearance is hardly streamline ... more

During my final year of uni, this little gem turned out to be a Godsend. Doing a course which required a lot of camera work, I needed somewhere to store all the raw footage, which anyone who's ever worked with footage from a high quality video camera knows, takes up a hell of a lot of space.

So I needed somewhere to keep it locked away safely to take around from uni computer to uni computer. My weapon of choice for an external hard drive was the Lacie Desktop Hard Disk 320 GB.

Having brought it online for just under £50, that instantly stuck me as a bargain. Purchased approximately 18 months ago, that was a steal. Naturally, with the passing of time and the increasing availability of external hard drives, the price of this items has began to fall, as is the case with all types of technology.

Once plugged in and inserted into a USB drive, the drive is instantly recognised by the computer. It may need formatting if you required to move extremely large files (over a couple of GB in size) but that's easy enough when you go to My Computer and right-click the drive. (I'm aware that some technophobes will already be lost on what I'm talking about here!)

It's proved reliable for me since the day I brought it, with copious video clips still sat on there, along with my gargantuan music collection. It's appearance is hardly streamline with it just looking like a rectangular box in a black matt finish. You can get sleeker, more stylish hard drives nowadays, but as mentioned previously, that happens with the competitive market for this type of product in an attempt to sell them.

So, here's all the specifications and technological jargon for your reading pleasure...

Capacity : 320GB
Interface : Hi-Speed USB 2.0
Rotational Speed (rpm) : 7200
Cache : 16MB (2 x 8MB) or greater
Interface Transfer Rate : Up to 480Mbits/s (60MB/s)
Size : 115 x 65 x 208 mm / 4.5 x 2.5 x 8.2 in
Weight : 1800 g / 63.5 oz
System Requirements : Computer with USB 2.0 interface, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X 10.3 or higher, Pentium II 350MHz processor or greater / G3, G4, G5 Mac Intel processor or greater, 128MB RAM minimum.

But now the bombshell - during the 'research' in this review - Amazon tells me this product is no longer available, and they don't know when or if this item will be back in stock. This is probably due to the 2.5 inch version now being available - the 'streamline' version. Apparently, even in the world of desktop hard drives, looks are everything... 

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