LaCie Neil Poulton Drive

LaCie on Thursday unveiled the latest in a long line of designer hard drives with a new version of the standard LaCie Hard Disk. The glossy black box is designed by France-based designer Neil Poulton and is designed to call attention to itself but also disappear into the dark with only an LED light to provide its glow; it also includes an intelligent passive cooling design that draws air from underneath to generate airflow with less need for cooling fans.

In its new form, the drive offers three interfaces that guarantee a connection to almost any device, according to LaCie: besides USB available with a pioneering version shipped last year, the new model adds FireWire 400 (with a second port for daisy-chaining) and also an external SATA jack for those who like the newer but potentially faster standard. The Hard Disk also comes preloaded with backup utilities for Macs and Windows PCs and is set to automatically copy utilities to the local PC before users delete them on the external drive to save space.

LaCie ships the drive in a single, 500GB trim level for $150 and continues to sell a USB-only model for $110.

By Electronista Staff