The LaCie Little Big Disk should be called the Little Heavy Disk. Though it weighs merely 1.4 pounds, the drive feels very sturdy and hefty in your hand, considering its compact size. The device's rugged design really makes you think that you are dealing with a little tough guy, so we were eager to put it to the test to find out just how tough it was.
- Drive type: Portable hard disk drive
- Capacity: 160GB, 200GB, 320GB
- Capacity of test unit: 200GB
- Cache: 16MB
- Dimension: 1.6 by 3.3 by 5.5 inches, 1.4 pounds
- Notable design features: Pocket-size compact
- Connection options: FireWire 800 (two ports), Hi-Speed USB 2.0, FireWire 400
- OSs supported: Mac OS 10.x/Mac OS 9.x and Windows 2000/Windows XP
- Software included (on drive): LaCie 1-Click Backup Software (Windows XP/2000, Mac OS 10.x), Silverkeeper backup software (Mac OS 9 & 10.x), Silverlining Pro Utilities (Mac OS 9)
- Additional features: Rugged design, built-in RAID 0, FireWire-bus powered, removable drive stand
- Service/support: One-year warranty; phone support Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT (toll call); Web site support: FAQs, manuals, drivers, online help-request form; hardcopy quick-install guide; LaCie Utilities CD-ROM with user manual.
We were impressed with the Little Big Disk's performance. The LaCie Little Big Disk was one of a very few external drives we've tested that offers consistently similar write and read speeds. Using a FireWire 400 connection, it averaged about 9.5 minutes to write our 10GB test folder to disk and copy it back to our PC. If you have a FireWire 800 port, you should see even faster performance. However, even using FireWire 400, the Little Big Disk was already the top performer among the external hard drives of its physical size (or bigger) that we've tested. Audiovisual pros, in particular, will rejoice at the drive's blazing speeds.
