LaCie 320 GB D2 Hard Drive USB 2.0/Firewire 400 & 800 (301146U)

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Price: $220.00   

Product Feature

• Capacity - 320 GB /Interface - 2 x FireWire 800 (9-pin) ports /1 x FireWire 400 (6-pin) port (compatible with iLink, DV)/ 1 x Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (compatible with USB 1.1)
• Rotational Speed (rpm) - 7200 /Interface Transfer Rate - FireWire 800 - up to 800Mbits/s (100MB/s) /FireWire 400 - up to 400Mbits/s (50MB/s) /USB 2.0 - up to 480Mbits/s (60MB/s) /Max Sustained Transfer Rate - FireWire 800 - up to 64MB/s / FireWire 400 - up to 42MB/s /USB 2.0 - up to 34MB/s / Average Seek Time (Write) - <10 ms >
• Software Configuration - Driver-free for Windows XP/2000 or Mac OS X; Silverlining for Mac OS 9; Silverkeeper for backup with Mac OS 9 & Max OS X
• System Requirements - FireWire 800 equipped computer - Mac OS 10.2 or greater or Windows 2000/XP/Vista /FireWire 400 or iLink equipped computer - Mac OS 9.x/10.x or Windows 2000/XP/Vista /Hi-Speed USB 2.0 equipped computer - Mac OS 10.2.x or greater or Windows 2000/XP/Vista / USB 1.1 equipped computer - Mac OS 9.x/10.x or Windows 2000/XP/Vista / Intel Pentium II 350MHz-compatible or Apple G3/G4/G5/Intel processor; minimum 64MB RAM (Apple G4 processor required for use with FireWire 800)
• Box Contents - FireWire 800 to FireWire 800 cable; FireWire 400 to FireWire 400 cable; iLink/DV cable; Hi-Speed USB 2.0 cable (USB 1.1 compatible); Drive stand; External power supply; LaCie Storage Utilities CD-ROM including - Silverlining Utilities (Mac OS 9) for advanced drive management, and SilverKeeper (for Mac) software for automatic backup and file verification
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Product Description

Combining all of the leading interfaces into one drive, the LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface now also comes in higher capacities to handle your most demanding projects. It can be easily shared among multiple users and is conveniently plug & play. With up to 800Mbits/s per bus and up to 64MB/s per drive burst, it's ideal for a variety of professional applications for your PC and Macintosh. Unit Dimensions (WxHxD) - 1.7 x 6.3 x 6.8 inches (44 x 160 x 173mm) / Weight - 3.31 lbs / 1500 g Manufacturer's 1 Year Limited Warranty

LaCie 320 GB D2 Hard Drive USB 2.0/Firewire 400 & 800 (301146U) Review

I've been using this external drive for a month now with my MacBook Pro and have not experienced any problems. It serves as my primary backup drive to mirror my MBP's internal drive in case of failure. I also use it to store DV files for editing and other media files.

Data transfer speeds are fast over Firewire 800 as expected. Average transfer speed at 50% capacity is 27-70MB/sec. Although a 16MB cache would've been nicer for a drive of this capacity, 8MB seems perfectly fine for most needs. Firewire 400 speeds average 20-33MB/sec. USB 2.0 is the slowest averaging 13-18 MB/sec. Keep in mind that these are rough estimates and that read/write speed will vary depending on file size, the part of the disk it's writing to, the level of file fragmentation, and your computer's specs. But generally Firewire 800 will be fastest and USB 2.0 will be slowest.

Although this drive unit has no internal fan, the Seagate ST3320820A 7200rpm HDD is not silent. Next to my MacBook Pro, the whirring of the spinning HDD is clearly audible. When it's reading or writing, the clicking of the drive head is also noticeable. Every HDD makes noise to a certain degree, with some quieter than others. I've found Western Digital HDD's to be among the quieter ones, Hitachi's being fairly noisy and Seagate's somewhere in between. I keep the LaCie under my desk and don't notice the whirring sound, but can still hear it click occasionally. I don't mind the clicks since that helps me know when it's busy. But the constant whirring sound on your desk may drive you batty especially if you work in a quiet environment. So my recommendation is to put the drive someplace where you can't see it.

One feature of this drive is that it will spindown if you disconnect it from your Mac. Some external HDDs continue spinning unless powered down. The LaCie also obeys your Mac's Energy Saver hard disk sleep settings. The default spindown time I believe is 10 minutes. There are various third-party tools that allow you to modify the spindown time. I just use Terminal and the "pmset" command to modify this. For example, to change the spindown time to 45 minutes when my MBP is connected to a charger, I enter this in Terminal:

sudo pmset -c spindown 45

One caveat about modifying the spindown time - this setting affects all drives connected, including your internal drive. So you will need to choose what spindown limit is reasonable for all drives. (Personally, I'm ok with 45 minutes on mine.)

One last thing... if you plan to use this drive as a bootable backup drive with your Intel Mac, be sure to first re-partition the drive using the GUID partitioning scheme. This will be one of your options in Disk Utility. You'll then be able to backup your internal drive or install OS X onto the LaCie and boot from it. The default partition scheme out of the box is Apple Partiton Map, which is bootable for PowerPC Macs. To boot with Windows you will need to repartition it as Master Boot Record.

To sum up, I've had a good experience with this drive and would recommend it to those looking for an affordable, large capacity, Mac compatible, Firewire 800 drive.

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