LaCie 250 GB Brick Desktop Hard Drive USB 2.0 Red (301062U)

The hard drive worked fine, and I appreciated its funky aesthetic. However, it's not the smallest or lightest box in the world so it does take up space for those that will be taking their external hard drive/s with them often. Also, I found its occasional humming during use noticeable, if not particularly loud. My one major gripe is that it's not nearly the sturdiest of machines. I took it with me when I moved countries and it didn't seem to make the journey, though I took it in carry-on and don't believe it was treated particularly abrasively. It has a spinning drive piece that has broken, rendering the hard drive useless and the information saved on it inaccessible. Now, I have to try and figure out how to extract the data from the drive. I've been told that such parts are common in externals, but I would recommend purchasing a "rugged" design model if you will take yours traveling.

I bought a LaCie 250 GB USB 2.0 red brick drive in November 2006 to back up a large amount of digital photo work, and as a general backup disk. So far, the drive has worked flawlessly, though it's worth noting I don't run it constantly. I only power on the drive and connect it to a system when I need to back up or retrieve data. Pro: - The drive is quiet when idling -- much quieter than my T43 laptop's fan. - It's worked flawlessly: no data loss, and shows up as a plug-and-play device with no problems. - USB 2.0 is reasonably fast and flexible for moving between various PCs. - The case design is unique, fun and eye-catching. - It's a reasonably-priced drive, even though there are less expensive drives out there. Con: - As other reviewers have noted, the power switch is a bit difficult to find by feel alone and is cumbersome to depress if you have larger fingers. - The female-DIN power-supply connector on the back of the drive also seems fragile, so I've always been extremely careful when attaching the power supply to the drive. - The included USB cable is pretty short. - The included backup software did not install on Windows XP Pro/SP1 (and I haven't bothered with it since.) Even with so many items in my "Con" list, I still give this drive four stars, mostly because of price/performance/reliability, and because none of the negatives listed above affect my work.

It works quite well. It's silent and has not given any problems. I hope it stays that way. Looks really cool on my desk!.

It has been the most hassle-free piece of hardware I've ever used. I simply opened up the box and plugged in the cables. The drive was FAT32 formatted and my Airport Extreme base station recognized it immediately after I hooked it up. It now runs as a network drive. Looks and feel: cool design from packaging & box, to the actual drive. I'm very pleased with it thus far.

I bought it strickly for backup. It works great. It's a great investment. Being USB portable it's one of the few things you can take with you to a new computer. My only regret was that I didn't buy a 500GB. The only thing that sucked was their packaged backup software. I did some research on line & downloaded "backup4all". It saves the backed up files as zip's. There's a bunch of backup softwares out there & I don't have a clue which is the best but I can attest that this one works great with the LaCie & is easy to use.