Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Probably the biggest drive for consumer use |
| Disadvantages: |
Takes some time to defragment or format |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
The LaCie d2 ‘Big Disk’ is the fastest and biggest external hard disk drive that I’ve ever seen for consumer use.
I handle so much data for the three businesses that I run that I needed a back up drive that could handle everything I had.
This meant backing up entire, built in, drives and imaging them to the LaCie d2 ‘Big Disk’ (as they now call it). LaCie now manufacture even bigger capacity disks but they have a
price to match, this one is available at around £250.00 on-line.
It’s heavier than you imagine when you actually get to take it out of the box, but what superb build quality, so solid and robust.
It runs quietly as the casing acts as the heat sink, no noisy fans. Only when you’re transferring packets of data do you occasionally hear the faint sound of disk access.
A blue ‘on/off’ button is the only control built into the small unit. This is used when connecting to a notebook PC with a four pin connection. However, when you use it on a full sized PC with six pin connection (both supplied by LaCie in the box) the unit turns on and off automatically when the computer does. Nice touch.
It’s so big that when you initially format the
drive after buying it, you’ll have to be patient, it takes a couple of hours or so.
Also, I find that, when the disk is very full, defragmenting takes hours but does, however, become quicker if you defragment on a regular basis.
You’ll need to
format the drive at first if you are using it on a PC.
Formatting on NTFS on your PC may mean you won’t need to defragment as often anyway, it depends on your set up.
If you are using it for a MAC
computer, it’s already formatted and you’ll not need to necessarily do it again.
Transferring data is the fastest you’ll get with current technology. That being USB 2.0, Firewire and Firewire 800. All these standards are supported here. There is also an 8mb buffer built into the drive instead of the standard LaCie offering of 2mb. A big plus point.
You’ll need the program built in to Windows XP to partition this drive (Click on: Programs/Administrative tools/Computer management then click Disk management) or, if you have Windows 98, ME some software is supplied. You may not want to partition it anyway but it’s good to know that it can be done.
Mac users software is also supplied on CDROM along with a huge user guide for MAC and PC which can be printed out and is very useful indeed.
I never knew that you could do so much with a hard disk drive, it seems to be capable of most things connectivity and feature wise, although I don't believe that it's 'bootable', meaning starting your computer from it won't be possible. This shouldn't be an issue to anyone anyway as you'll boot from your computer and use this drive as extra
storage for your programs and data.
As well as backing up data from my main PC and notebook computer, I store data required for my job of work which involves travelling around the countryside. The LaCie d2 Big Disk is ideal for packing and travels well.
I found, however, I needed another drive to back up this drive to, to keep my data safe. So I purchased a second LaCie d2 Big Disk for this purpose. They can link together without the need to plug both into the actual computer, which a handy feature.
I use USB 2.0 at home and Firewire when I’m out and about, the LaCie drives run beautifully on either. The notebook computer I use on my travels has no USB 2.0 so to be able to use Firewire was very handy indeed.
Bear in mind that you can’t use both USB 2.0 and Firewire at the same time, it’s one or the other. You also can’t link two drives using two different standards. I link mine together using Firewire, which suits me.
You can also link up another device directly to the LaCie drive, for example, a digital camera … handy for transferring your images.
All in all, it’s a hard disk drive … what can you say about a hard disk drive?
Well, if you need one and you need speed, size and build quality, look no further than this, very affordable, offering from LaCie.
This product has not yet been reviewed. 
