Advantages: So easy to set up
Disadvantages: Firewire not the most popular port

...I chose an external hard drive over an internal drive as when I chose it my pc at the time had the maximum number of hard drives, which would fit in my pc. However I still needed space and felt it was a waste to take out a smaller drive to replace for a larger one so as a last resort I looked at the external option. It was then I saw LaCie and the d2 range and I knew I had to have it. I looked at higher capacity LaCie drives, but at the time I purchased it, the 120 Gb was the highest one, which also seemed to have a reasonable and worthwhile price. Now after owning for over two years I still find it ample space!! I found the drive simple to connect, I only had to load on the software (drivers), plug it in and follow the simple instructions and it is completely formatted to your chosen specifications. Also once it has been formatted... Read review

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Advantages: Fast transfer speed, protection from knocks and drops
Disadvantages: Fairly high price

...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). Measuring at 9 cm wide, 14.5 cm long, 2.5 cm in height and weighing just 250 grams, making the LaCie external hard-drive very light as well as portable. The hard-drive is portable in the way that it is very light, the only thing you have to take into account is that you will require a medium to large sized pocket or any form of bag in order to carry the device. You could always opt to just carrying it around in your hand, which is not very practical in everyday life. All external and internal hard-drives state a certain amount of memory capacity, but in fact... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Probably the biggest drive for consumer use
Disadvantages: Takes some time to defragment or format

...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... Read review

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Advantages: Value for money, Looks, capacity
Disadvantages: Scratches, Rubber feet fall off, NO aftersales support (worth mentioning)

...LaCie have obviously marketed this external drive at the people who want both a functional computer system and a good-looking one. The drive has been designed with F. A. Porsche and has a nice minimalist look to it, a metallic grey case with all most mirrored front the drive looks great, even better when stacked with another one. With only one LED on the front your not left with loads of bright lights flashing at you when your trying to keep the room dark when playing games or movies. The drive is also very quiet to the point where you need to look at the light to ensure its still on. LaCie have released the drive in a range of sizes with a range of connection such as USB and Firewire so whatever your need you should be able to find a drive to suit. I personally purchased the 250GB as it was both the largest and best value for money... Read review

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Advantages: Very quick with firewire, quiet (no fan), sturdy and well-built, 4-6-pin firewire lead, looks cool!
Disadvantages: No backup/partitioning software included

...My laptop hard disk had recently been playing up, with sectors becomming corrupt all over the place. So I thought it was time to buy a decent external backup drive, with enough space for future storage needs. Luckily my laptop has a 4 pin Firewire connector so I knew backing up the 30GB of data wouldn't take too long, compared to using the USB 1.1 port. (take note: with some Firewire drives you may need to buy a 4-to-6 pin adaptor/lead for laptop use). After doing some research, and having previously used LaCie drives at an old design studio job and being impressed with them, I decided the D2 250GB was for me. It has 3 connectors: USB 2.0 (compatible with USB 1.1 but of course is slower), Firewire 400, and the new Firewire 800 (Apple only, but hopefully the PC will adopt the faster Firewire standard in time). I bought the largest HD I... Read review

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Advantages: SLIM, LOADS OF MEMORY, RELIABLE
Disadvantages: NEED A SPARE USB PORT ON YOUR COMPUTER

...Well what can I say, I brought a PC 4 years ago. I use it a lot as I work from home. I have formatted my PC a number of times because of Viruses entering the PC. I was unable to buy a new PC which is why I have had the same PC for 4 years. Each time I formatted the PC I would back-up all of my stuff onto DVD's. Just to make you aware NEVER backup important documents just on a DVD which is what I learnt. I had my house renovated a few weeks ago. I thought I had cleared everything out from my room but was unaware that I had left my DVDs within my draw which was in my room which was getting renovated. My DVDs got damaged, dust and scratch. I lost a lot of work that was backedup. I lost a lot of important files. This is a lesson to be learnt for all. I then decided to buy a hard drive and I just knew that the LaCie Mobile Hard Drive... Read review

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Advantages: Large capacity, low noise, small & looks great
Disadvantages: No standby mode.

...LaCie 250GB USB Hard Drive My PC is about three years old and has a 160GB hard drive installed. I had always been amazed at how quickly the size of standard hard drives had grown and thought the days of juggling software and stored data were long gone. I'd never come close to filling a hard drive since they started getting bigger than 30GB and could back up all my important files to a few CDs. That was before I got into video editing, digital photography and MP3s. As I started downloading several years worth video footage I was shocked to see how much space they took up. The early editing software I used had a counter showing how big the file you are currently downloading is and the available space remaining on your hard drive. This counter is in GB and to see it moving was frightening. I quickly realised I needed some external... Read review

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Advantages: Size, Looks
Disadvantages: Only Firewire, cable supplied.

...I bought this last christmas to be used as an extention to my laptop's hard drive. At the time i think it cost me £130 but now is available for around £70. I really like the look of this hard drive, it feels solid and is easily stackable. An advantage to it being firwire means it can be daisy-chained, allowing more than one hard drive to be connected to a single computer via a single firewire port. A disadvantage which revealed an advantage of LaCie came when it is only supplied with a "large" to "large" firewire cable. My laptop has a "small" firewire socket and so i wasn't able to use it at first. Buying a seperate cable to allow connection it still didn't work, so i contacted the manufacturor and they were very helpful and suggested i sent it back to them. A week or so later it arrived back to me with a letter saying they had found... Read review

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Advantages: reliable and fast
Disadvantages: 40 gb capacity my be too small if you have lots of phots etc.

...This is a great product – I have two of them and a use them to back up and transfer all my files. This is a great way to move files between different desktops or laptops as you have much greater capacity than with a usb stick. It device plugs in with a standard mini usb cable and I’ve never has any problems with the device not being detected by the computer. The removable hard drive comes with a carry pouch – which is a black velvet pouch. I’ve not has any problems with reliability at all. My computer seen to read and write to the removable drive at the same speed as the internal hard drive, and in fact you can work from the removable drive as you do from the built in drive. The only disadvantage is that the software it comes with is not great, but there is not need to use this – personally I use a standard synchronization package... Read review

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Advantages: Capacity, looks, decent manual, cheap
Disadvantages: A bit slow, a lot to lose in one go

...With people starting to amass more and more data on their PCs, the old methods of backup such as tape or CD & DVD are becoming woefully inadequate. As a result, by far the most cost efficient method for either storing data or backing it up is the external hard drive. That said, 1TB or 1 Terrabyte is a crazy amount of space and the sort of storage that would have kept a multinational company ticking over nicely ten years ago. The LaCie (pronounced Lassie, like the dog) 1TB unit is a reasonably basic device that only has a USB2 (although USB1 is supported) interface and comes with a suitable lead, external power supply and software CD. It can work with both PCs and Macs although by default it's formatted for PC use so Mac users will need to reformat it first but that's no hardship really. On first opening the box, it looks really good... Read review

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