Peripheral and accessory maker LaCie has revved up its line of mobile hard drives designed by Porsche Design GmbH to capacities of 250 GB, meaning the line now spans capacities from 80 to 250 GB and price ranges from $105 to $270.
The drives weigh less than a deck of cards and come in a small, sleek case that can easily slip into a shirt pocket. Catering to mobile users and folks who rely on portability, the mobile hard drives sport both USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces and draw power off the connection bus, so no external power adapter is necessary. Rubber feet underneath mean the drives can be stacked securely.
The drives ship pre-formatted as FAT 32 volumes which are usable immediately on Windows and (most) Mac systems, although users wil generally get better performance if they reformat as NTFS (WIndows) or HFS+ (Mac)—reformatting also lets users take advantage of file system features like journaling. The drives come with LaCie’s backup software—so if you buy one, you have no excuse for not backing up your data regularly. Right?
