The LaCie Rugged All-Terrain External 250 hard-drive is a portable storage device which will allow you to store 250gb of multimedia files such as pictures, music and video. You will obviously also be able to hold documents and other files as well (e.g. software installations).

All external and internal hard-drives state a certain amount of memory capacity, but in fact they have less than what they state. For e.g. a 320 GB hard-drive will have about 290 GB, which is quite a chunk away from the stated amount. So, looking at the LaCie external hard-drive you will be looking at a memory capacity of 230-240 GB, which in this case is not a large chunk, but is still considerable.

Now, leaving the memory capacity of the hard-drive and moving onto other areas of the LaCie hard-drive. This particular hard-drive has a USB 2.0 interface, which is basically the type of connection the hard-drive uses in order to connect to an external device, usually a desktop PC or laptop. A USB 2.0 interface means that the transfer of all files to and from the hard-drive will be fairly quick. Another factor, which speeds up the transfer of files is the buffer size. Buffer size put into simple terms is a region in the hard-drive where data is held temporarily, before permanently entering the hard-disk memory. The buffer size of the LaCie external hard-drive is 8 MB, this means that a maximum of 8 MB of data is temporarily held before being fully transferred into the hard-drive. The buffering process means that data is transferred constantly and consistently.

As soon as you plug your LaCie external hard-drive into your PC or Laptop, it will be discovered virtually instantly as the average seek-time (time taken to discover or find the hard-drive) is 12 ms (mili-seconds), which is absolutely quick and efficient as is anything under 1 second.

The most important aspect of the LaCie external hard-drive is its protective outer casing, which will protect it from potentially dangerous knocks and drops. Most external hard-drives come with minimal protection and if dropped may cause you to lose all existing data on the hard-drive. You won't have to worry about dropping the LaCie hard-drive because the outer casing has been specifically designed to absorb the force created by dropping the device. And making sure none or very little damage is caused to the fragile components, which make up the hard-drive. The outer-casing doesn't mean that the hard-drive will with-stand drops from very high places, only drops from fairly small heights, such as 1 - 1.5 metres.

The LaCie external hard-drive will function on all Apple and Microsoft Operating systems, so you will not have to worry if you are using an Apple or Microsoft OS. The hard-drives system requirements are very basic and will function on all PC's with as little as 350 MHz of processing speed and 128 MB of ram. Again this is no worry as most people have PC's with more than enough RAM and processing power.