LaCie D2 Quadra

LaCie D2 Quadra External Hard Drive Review

LaCie has been on fire. Releasing great drive after great drive. Does the LaCie D2 Quadra 2TB continue this trend? Or does it fall flat on its face? Read on to find out…

Jump to:
– Design and Build
– Size and Weight
– Connectivity
– Speed/Benchmarks
– What’s inside the Box
– What other buyers are saying
– Conclusion

Design and Build

The LaCie d2 Quadra hard drive has a visibly striking design. The case is made out of aluminium metal, absolutely no plastic here, but do not worry, it has rubber feet on the base so to not scratch your lovely desk surfaces. On either side of the casing, the aluminium has a ribbed profile that gives the drive excellent grip. We should also mention that the drive looks fantastic next to any of Apple’s metal products – iPad, Macbook, etc.

On the front face there is a noticeable big blue button that lights up to show hard drive activity and looks like something that R2D2 has. This button is used to run the pre-installed software to help you with creating backups, but we didn’t think this was overly intuitive or useful, you’re much better off using Time Machine in Mac, and Windows Explorer’s drag and drop method.

On the back you will find ventilation holes for the fan, which unfortunately is quite noisy, this is not a drive you would want to keep on all day. However, thanks to the metal casing the drive does remain at a cool temperature even after several hours of use.

Size and Weight

The moment you hold the D2 Quadra drive you appreciate the engineering that has gone into designing this drive. It is heavy, but for once – heavy is good. It feels solid and almost unbreakable. On the box it states that the drive weighs 3.7 lbs / 1.7kg and is (WxHxD) 60 x 168 x 183 mm / 2.3 x 6.6 x 7.2 in.

Connectivity

On the back of the drive you will find all of the ports. Starting at the top you have the on/off/automatic switch, on and off are self-explanatory but automatic is an interesting feature, setting it to this means that whenever you plug the drive to any external device using one of the ports and it senses there is power, the hard drive automatically powers up and starts running, which makes it very easy to use. We recommend keeping it on ‘Automatic’ unless you are going away for a while, in which case you should leave it on ‘off’.

There are two firewire 800 ports on the back, just next to the USB 3.0 and eSATA ports.

Speed/Benchmarks

Here is a guide of speeds you can expect with the drive:

As expected they are all super fast. The USB 3.0 proves to be the king of the high-speed transfer world with speeds hitting the 130MB/s mark, but we would be just as happy with only using the eSATA with its 115Mb/s speeds. If you only have USB 2.0 on your system, you will unfortunately be limited by the technology and only hit speeds of around 15MB/s. It is thoroughly recommended you upgrade your computer system to have modern ports. The amount of time wasted on slower transfers is no longer acceptable in this day and age. After all, time is money.

What comes inside the box?

Inside of your box you will find the following:

  • LaCie d2 Quadra v3 Desktop Hard Drive
  • eSATA-to-eSATA cable
  • FireWire 800 (9-to-9 pin) cable
  • USB 3.0 cable (USB 2.0 compatible)
  • external power supply
  • drive stand for upright desktop use
  • LaCie Setup Assistant
  • LaCie Utilities (preloaded)
  • Genie Backup Assistant software with data restore for Windows 2000/XP/Vista
  • Intego Backup Assistant software with data restore for Mac OS X 10.4.

Conclusion

Pros

  • Has multiple high-speed interface ports. Very impressive.
  • Stays cool due to innovative case design
  • R2D2 front button rocks.

Cons

  • Very expensive
  • Overly noisy when transferring big files
  • Weight – It does feel well-built and protective, but put it in your bag and you will not be impressed for much longer.
More Stories
Definite Guide – How To Buy A Hard Drive