Worried about some axe-wielding maniac dealing to your external hard drive? You may find some comfort in LaCie’s latest offering the Rugged Hard Disk. It offers a scratch-protected (note not resistant) aluminium case along with a shock-resistant rubber bumper in a delicious shade of orange. Aside from the usual specs, the maximum drop height is 90cm and that’s in non-operating mode – apparently dropping is not recommended in operating mode. The unit comes in two flavours, a USB 2.0 connection version and a USB 2.0, FireWire 400/800 version. Apparently the encased HDD is Hitachi’s 2.5-inch Travelstar 5K500 with the following specs
* 5,400 rpm
* 480 Mbps transfer rate
* 90 x 25 x 145 mm
* 250 g
* plays nicely with Windows 2000 upwards and Mac OS 9.x upwards
Pricing depends on the capacity required and connectivity option chosen. For USB 2.0 only, 80 GB starts at US$90, going up to US$340 for the 500 GB version, whilst the USB/FireWire model starts out at US$130 for 120 GB increasing up to US$400 for 500 GB’s worth of zeros and ones.
Source: LaCie Rugged Hard Disk