LaCie Little Big Disk 320GB

Small, portable drive with triple interface

Let’s get straight to the point: If you’re a video/motion graphics/multimedia person and you’re on the go, you’ll want this drive! The LaCie Little Big Disk is a large-capacity drive with built-in RAID 0 configuration and FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB 2 connections. And the best part…it’s completely bus powered through FireWire—no more inconvenient A/C adapters. The drive comes with a screw-in base to give it weight when it sits on your desk, but most mobile editors will just pack the drive with their laptop—it’s only about the size of a couple of iPods.

This hard drive is formatted for the Mac and you’ll need to re-format the drive for it to operate under the Windows operating system. To connect additional devices, you need to use the same interface, either FireWire or USB, because your computer won’t recognize the daisy-chained device if the interfaces are mixed. But for the best performance, connect it directly to a native FireWire port on your computer and avoid daisy-chaining it with other devices. During data transfers, it’s also best to wait before launching other applications that will use the same port. Just to be clear: You can do all these things, but they just won’t give you the best performance.

The 320-GB unit that I tested comes with two 5400-rpm drives. A 200-GB unit with 7200-rpm drives is also available, but here’s a little secret: If you put 170 GB of content on both the 200-GB and 320-GB drives, they’ll both run at about the same speed. This is because there’s more headroom on the larger capacity drive. For most people, the 320-GB unit will be the better buy.—Rod Harlan

PRICE: $419.99
FROM: LaCie
PHONE: 503-844-4500
WEB: www.lacie.com
FOR: Mac and Windows
RATING: 4

LAYERS VERDICT
HOT Bus powered; RAID 0; FireWire 800 drive!
NOT Overpriced in today’s market