Unfortunately, it's difficult to pinpoint just what contributed the most to the overall performance gain: a fast, recent-model hard drive, the newer-model USB/FireWire bridge chips in the drive and the controller, or a combination of both. From our recent experiences with late-model internal hard drives, we suspect the larger part of the accolades should go to the chips. However, what is obvious is that FireWire 800 offers better performance than USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394a. In a single drive setup like the one we tested, it's a noticeable if minimal gain. However, in a RAID array, the doubled bandwidth and the higher burst transfer rate (61MB per second) should have a much larger impact.
LaCie provides a one-year warranty on the d2 Extreme, though tech support is a toll call and is available weekdays only from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT. However, this external hard drive is easy to use, so the company's printed documentation, support CD, and online support should suffice for most users.
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- FireWire,
- LaCie,
- external hard drive,
- USB 2.0,
- wire
Where to buy
250 GB 7200 rpm d2 Triple Interface External Hard Drive:
$210.27
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
|---|---|---|---|
|
PCNation.com
|
$210.27 | Yes |
|
