LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk

It’s been a while since we’ve taken a look at any LaCie gear, in fact almost two years. So we feel it’s time to make up for that, and today we’re taking a gander at the d2 Quadra hard drive. It boasts a quadruple interface for full connectivity to PCs and Macs, an aluminum heat sink and ergonomic design. There’s backup software included namely Genie and Intego and the d2 talks nicely with Time Machine.

LaCie are counting on the d2 Quadra’s speed to make it appealing, stating it can handle multiple demanding professional tasks and be hooked up to your DV camera. It also offers cool daisy-chaining with other drives to provide RAID 0/RAID 1. Of course there’s a eSATA 3Gb/s connection along with FireWire 400 and 800 but only USB 2.0. There’s a Setup Assistant to, um, assist with setup and the case has a clever and attractive heat sink design. Much nicer than the standard flush cases. Anyway enough marketing spiel and blurb, here are the hard numbers

LaCie d2 Quadra specifications

* Capacity 3 TB
* Spin speed 7200 rpm
* 1 x eSATA 3Gbits port
* 2 x FireWire 800 ports (9-pin)
* 1 x Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port (USB 1.1-compatible)
* Aluminum heat sink design for safe, fanless, quieter operation
* 16MB or greater cache
* Interface Transfer Rate
* eSATA - up to 3Gbits/s (300MB/s)
* FireWire 800 - up to 800Mbits/s (100MB/s)
* Hi-Speed USB 2.0 - up to 480Mbits/s (60MB/s)
* Burst Transfer Rate
* eSATA - up to 105-115MB/s
* FireWire 800 - up to 75-85MB/s
* Hi-Speed USB 2.0 - up to 30-35MB/s
* 1.7 x 6.3 x 6.8 in. / 44 x 160 x 173 mm
* 3.31 lbs. / 1500 g
* Speaks nicely with latest versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 / Mac OS X 10.5(Intel only), 10.6, 10.7, 10.8

LaCie d2 Quadra video review

LaCie d2 Quadra reviews

Amazon - 3 out of 5
CNet - 5 out of 5
Macworld - 4.5 out of 5

Pros - heat sink case design, speed, compatibility
Cons - weight

We like LaCie’s d2 Quadra hard drive, not becuase it’s super connected, or because of it’s clever heat sink design, but because it’s fast, not super SSD fast but for an external hard drive it’s performance is good. And as far as we’re concerned it’s speed that matters, especially with a large external drive. So the d2 Quadra gets a big thumbs up from Our Picks.

Featured Tags external-hdd, lacie


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