LaCie 160GB Firewire Desktop External Hard Drive ( 300702U ) P3 design by FA Porsche

by LaCie

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5 x 8 x 2 inches ; 2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000E1FDE
• Item model number: 300702U
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2003

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Designed by the world-famous Porsche Design Agency GmbH, the LaCie Hard Drive exhibits world-class style and elite performance. The result of decades of architectural expertise, these drives feature state-of-the-art design and awesome performance.

built to move
With room to store up to 160 GB, you can back up your entire system or add extra storage space when your internal hard drive is full. Built to be lightweight and durable, these drives can be easily moved for sharing and exchanging of files.

high-speed downloads
Available with high-speed FireWire interface, the LaCie Hard Drive offers fast data transfer rates (up to 400 Mbps) that are required for substantial jobs like rendering 2-D/3-D images, downloading digital photos, saving MP3s or transferring home videos from a camcorder.

easy to use
These drives offer setup that is nearly effortless, and are ready to use minutes after removing it from the box. Secured rubber feet allow drives to be stacked, so you can get the most out of limited desktop space.

Product Description

LaCie Desktop Hard Drives With FireWire 400 or USB 2.0 LaCie hard drives are good for speed intensive applications. So, transfer your data quickly with either FireWire or USB 2.0. Consider using this drive to store your video, music and other data. Compatible with PC and Mac, LaCie hard drives are originally formatted in FAT32. But, you can re-format the hard drive for NTFS and Mac OS Extended (HFS+). After you ve formatted the drive, you can partition the hard drive. One for your word documents, one for your spreadsheets and one for your multi-media files. Function and technology were created by both LaCie and Porsche Design G.m.b.H

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

133 of 140 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars May be among the best of a bad bunch, September 12, 2004

By 

John Faughnan "John G Faughnan" (St. Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: LaCie 160GB Firewire Desktop External Hard Drive ( 300702U ) P3 design by FA Porsche (Personal Computers)

The world of firewire drives for the Mac is not a happy world. LaCie's 250GB Porsche enclosure/drive has received awful reviews, for example. In my own experience I've recently tried and returned TWO enclosures for a 200 GB Maxtor. My subsequent research has found bad experiences with every vendor, save perhaps WeibeTech.

Of all the enclosures and drives I've tried, this one, borrowed from a friend, worked best. I may buy it, but I would NOT buy the 250 GB relative for any price. The reviews of that drive are uniformly negative.

Here's the fundamental problem:

1. USB 2 and Firewire 400 were in competition for a few years. USB 2.0 won.
2. Only owners of older Macs need a Firewire 400 drive, owners of newer Macs will usually go for a USB 2 drive.
3. The Firewire spec is very demanding. Most Macs and most enclosures don't really meet the specs -- but they fall short in different ways.
4. Various point releases of OS X have broken firewire support in different ways.
5. Different drives in the same enclosures yield different results.
6. Different cables produce different results, the best cables are expensive.

This is how to test:

1. Check heat. Run the drive hard for hours. Does the enclosure get too hot to hold? I had one drive almost melt the enclosure.
2. Check drive transfers. Transfer 100 GB of data. Does it work?
3. Dismount the drive and unplug. Plug again. Repeat. Does the drive mount and dismount?
4. Mount the drive. Put your machine to sleep. Awaken it. Does the drive spin up on request?
5. If you have an iPod, try it daisy chained with the drive. Can you mount, dismount? Does iTunes work? (Note however, iTunes may have trouble with any music library stored on an external drive, this appears to be an iTunes bug.)

Only the LaCie 160 passed all 4 tests on my iBook dual USB running 10.3.5. Two other enclosure/drive pairs failed.

So it may not be great, but it may be "better than the rest".

PS. I read a review here that said: "The drive is very stylish. Tried it on MAC panther OS, EXTREMELY slow, compared to my other LaCie d2 drive, also if it comes across anything it doesnt like (file name too long, unrecognized symbol) just quits copying. This product is practically useless but will be a nice stylish accessory for your retro office."

I wonder if that reviewer had the drive formatted as FAT32. A FAT32 formatted drive will display the problems he experienced. All he would have to do is use OS X Disk Utility software to reformat as HFS+. Unless you have very particular reasons, you should make sure the drive is HFS+ formatted.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works Perfectly and Reliably, October 13, 2004

By 

Stephen R. Duncan (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: LaCie 160GB Firewire Desktop External Hard Drive ( 300702U ) P3 design by FA Porsche (Personal Computers)

This drive worked right out of the box without a single "hitch." I did reformat to HFS (Mac OS extended) before moving files but would have most certainly done this to any new drive. It quietly and quickly accepted the 40 gigs I dumped onto it only seconds after plugging it in/formatting. I read the other reviews for this drive and was a bit hesitant to purchase it. Maybe the problems are Windows related? I'm running OS X Panther on a Power Mac G4.
It is running a bit warm after several hours but then so does a large-capacity internal drive. I'm not worried.
As for the design, I was at first turned off by it's stark minimalism and suspected that it would feel cheap; flimsy, dent-able, scratch-able metal. I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the box. It does not feel or look cheap and the metal casing is sturdy and MUCH more attractive than I had imagined. The body is matte and the face has a shinier brushed appearance.
I was skeptical when ordering this drive but did so mainly because I have had nothing but good luck with Lacie products. This drive is no exception.
I highly recommend.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars compact, stylish, quiet, March 8, 2004

By 

Brad West (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: LaCie 160GB Firewire Desktop External Hard Drive ( 300702U ) P3 design by FA Porsche (Personal Computers)

Mac users: first thing you should do is reformat the drive as an HFS+ volume using Disk Utility. This will allow you to use unicode characters in your filenames, a must if you'll use the disk as a volume for iTunes. This is a bit annoying since Mac users really seem to be the target demographic for this drive.

But once that's out of the way, the drive works great. Its clean, minimalist design is a perfect compliment to the Powerbook it sits next to, and it spins down to be near silent when I'm it's not being accessed. Exactly what I wanted in a drive.