Photo gallery: LaCie d2 Quadra Hard DriveLaCie's new d2 Quadra drive -- which arrives in the land of meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars at the end of February 2007 -- is a compact, 500GB drive designed for people who need high data transfer speeds over an eSATA connection or FireWire 800. Slower connection options -- in the form of USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 -- are also available, so you can use it with a variety of PCs. The drive comes with backup software for both Windows and Mac users, as well. It's speedy to boot, and it's a good deal: AU$539 for the 500GB drive.
In the CNET Labs' read/write tests, the d2 Quadra proved itself to be a speedy drive. Over a FireWire 800 connection, it wrote our 10GB folder of mixed file types in 6 minutes, 7 seconds and read back the same folder in 6 minutes, 41 seconds.
A front-mounted blue LED button indicates power and activity, and it can be programmed as a one-touch button to launch any application. There's also a three-way power switch that lets you manually turn the drive on and off or set it to auto so that it powers up and down with the connected PC (must be connected via USB or FireWire for this option).
