LaCie D2 Big Disk 500 GB

Features of the LaCie D2 Big Disk 500 GB

At 500 GB the Big disk gives lots of storage space in a slim 5.25" drive enclosure. The drive is connected to your PC via a USB 2.0 port. Internally, the LaCie Big Disk has a single 7200 RPM 500 GB HDD. LaCie quotes the average seek time as being greater tan 10ms. Buffer size is 8mb an the sustained data transfer rate is quoted at 34 MB/s.

LaCie includes with the Big Disk everything you need to get the drive set up and running. Included in the box are:

• USB 2.0 cable
• External power supply
• Drive stand
• Storage utilities CD with
  • Quick install guide
  • Silverlining Pro for Mac OS 9
  • SilverKeeper for Mac
  • 1-click backup software for PC/Mac

LaCie Big Disk 500 GB in Use

In my testing I used HD Tach to get some actual in use numbers from the LaCie Big Disk 500GB. The average read time I saw was 11.2 MB/s and the random access time was 14.2ms. Transferring large files to the LaCie drive was almost as fast as transferring the same file between internal drives on my system.

I transferred a 34.5 GB file from my internal HDD to the LaCie took right at two seconds. Transferring the same file from internal system disk to internal disk took about one second. Transfer speeds are very similar for the external LaCie and internal system disks.

Installing the big Disk was very easy on my Windows XP system. All I had to do was plug the external power adapter into the drive and plug the USB cable into my computer and the drive. XP recognized the drive immediately and installed it with no problems. The Big Disk was pre-formatted with NTFS when I installed it. This means that Mac and Windows 98 users will have to reformat the drive before using it.

Overall, the LaCie Big Disk is a nice external hard drive with great capacity, fast transfer speeds and a small form factor. If you need an external hard drive for your notebook or desktop PC, the LaCie Big Disk is a great drive.