Product Description

Fully loaded with all the best interfaces eSATA 3Gbits FireWire 800 FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 this all-in-one professional hard disk offers universal connectivity for PC and Mac users. For easy setup the LaCie Setup Assistant helps format according to your needs. The unique fanless aluminum heat sink design with 60% more surface area for heat dissipation keeps it quiet and safe. With the LaCie Shortcut Button*** easily launch any application in one push such as the included EMC Retrospect advanced backup software (PC/Mac). Perfect for digital content creation audio/video editing DVD authoring and web animation etc. the d2 Quadra can handle multiple demanding professional tasks. It can be daisy-chained via FireWire or connected to your DV camera and is even bootable in FireWire for Mac and in eSATA for Mac/PC.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12837 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: LaCie
• Model: 301440EK
• Released on: 2008-08-12
• Dimensions: 1.73" h x 6.30" w x 6.81" l, 3.31 pounds
• Hard Disk: 1000GB

Features

• Quadra Hard Disk
• External hard drive
• 500GB
• 16Mb cache

Manufacturer's Description
Fully loaded with all the best interfaces - eSATA 3Gbits, Firewire 800, Firewire 400 and USB 2.0 - this all-in-one professional hard disk offers universal connectivity for PC and Mac users.

For easy setup, the LaCie Setup Assistant helps format according to your needs. The unique, fanless aluminum heat sink design with 60% more surface area for heat dissipation keeps it quiet and safe.

With the LaCie Shortcut Button, easily launch any application in one push. Includes Genie Backup Assistant software for WIndows 2000, XP or Vista and Intego Backup Assistant software for Mac OS X 10.4 compatible with Apple® Time Machine™

Perfect for digital content creation, audio/video editing, DVD authoring and web animation. The d2 Quadra can handle multiple, demanding professional tasks.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

High performance but not ideal for every situation
The drive is very sturdy but also very heavy. I originally decided to go for this drive based on performance and the firewire 800 port was necessary.

I wanted a 500GB backup drive and was weighing up buying a 500GB portable 2.5" drive and this.

The portable has the advantage of being bus-powered. I wanted a drive with an on/off switch as I leave it plugged in and portable drives tend not to have one.

The price of a portable firewire 800 enclosure with a switch and a 500GB 2.5" 5400 rpm drive was £140 (£60 for the enclosure) and this one was £120.

I initially benchmarked the drive at 70MB/s and I was happy with this as a USB drive will get about 30MB/s and this one does too over the USB port.

However, after filling it above 400GB, the performance drops to 50MB/s. I have another USB drive that maintains 30MB/s even when close to full.

This drive is also fairly noisy and the light on the front is pretty big.

For a working drive e.g a scratch drive, this would be a good high performance drive if you make sure not to fill it too full. For a backup drive, I'd recommend just going for a bus-powered USB or firewire drive.

My bus-powered drives are about 1/8th the size of this drive and close to silent and once it's filled up, you hardly notice the performance difference at all.

I think once 2.5" drives reach 1TB in early 2010 (possibly even later this year when they reach 750GB), I will transition my drives over and free up some power sockets.

reliable
I have several LaCie hard disks but on occasions I have been seduced by low prices and bought other makes and have then regretted it. The main difference between the Lacie drives and the other drives is that I can depend on them for video editing, other drives may be perfectly OK for basic storage but when it comes to downloading large clips I have had problems with other drives, whereas the Lacie drives are dependable; they do the job efficiently and reliably.
The Lacie drives are solidly built and this one, in particular, has a solid metal construction, which must disperse heat very efficiently as the drive remains cool even after many hours of use.
The drive comes with a solid metal "foot", which can be attached to the drive so that it can be used vertically and thus save space. The drives can also be stacked.

500GB LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Drive
I've had the La Cie drive for a couple of weeks now and it has been simplicity its self to set up. I particularly like the fact that it can be easily configured for a FAT32 basis which suits my need for a backup facility that can both used for Mac and Windows.

It is silent running thanks to its fanless design and does not appear even warm to the touch thanks to its ribbed surface.

Highly recommended!