LaCie has decided to take advantage of the increasing size of hard drives and has updated both its 2big and d2 external USB drive products.
For those who need a lot of storage, but don’t want to go down the route of creating a homemade 70TB storage array, the 2big USB 3.0 unit is for you. Utilizing two of the latest 3TB hard drives it offers 6TB of storage. Not only that, but because this is two drives in parallel LaCie is also boasting the fastest transfer speed yet over USB 3.0 at 306MB/s. That’s a 20% increase over previous data transfer rates.
If your storage needs are still high, but too modest for a 2big, then the d2 USB 3.0 unit may be for you. It has a single 3TB drive and manages 156MB/s transfer speeds.
Erwan Girard, Business Unit Manager Professional Products at LaCie, commented:
There is no question heavy data users continue to demand higher capacities, and in turn faster transfer speeds. Today, LaCie answered this challenge by introducing the largest available capacity and fastest transfer speeds in a single solution, providing users with increased backup efficiency and reduced risk for backup interruption.
Pricing for both new models has not yet appeared on the LaCie website. For reference, the 4TB 2big unit is £350 and the 2TB d2 unit is £180.
Both drives are future proof for two reasons. They have removable hard drives meaning when 4TB+ drives come out you can just replace them. Also, they are both USB 3.0 which is a new standard meaning it’s going to be around for a number of years. You can also use the drives with a USB 2.0 connection if your current machine does not have a USB 3.0 controller and port.
Choosing an external hard drive for storage makes sense if you have a lot of data to backup or want to store media. However, online storage is getting increasingly cheaper to use with the only downside being the bandwidth it requires for transfers. Services like Dropbox are invaluable for quick and easy backups and file access anywhere. I think we will always need home storage options, though especially as we consume more digital media.
