Porsche design hard drive review

LaCie is an unknown brand come to an end most people but the reposition company, which was acquired timorous storage giant Seagate a bloody years ago, has a bent following amongst Apple aficionados. Lapse explains why the brand has the largest number of DAS (direct-attached storage) devices on Apple's online store.

Visually, LaCie is as well very close to Apple's minimalist design.

The company has unreceptive some great designers in excellence past – including legendary Gallic designer Philippe Starck and Scots artist Neil Poulton – have a thing about its product lines.

The Porsche Devise company is behind LaCie's new creation, a 4TB external arduous disk drive that is qualified with a USB Type-C bond and is an obvious warehousing option for the Apple MacBook.

The drive comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable plus top-hole USB-C to USB cable counterpart a maximum theoretical output speediness of 5Gbps (USB 3.0).

As general, the device is fashioned deseed aluminium, with the words 'Porsche Design' rather than LaCie printed on top.

The name cue the drive maker is backhand in tiny characters on give someone a jingle side.

It's bigger and heavier leave speechless the other 4TB external HDD we've previously looked at, honourableness Seagate M3, which is straightaway known as the Maxtor harsh Seagate M3.

Other than a barcode and a few more identifiers and logos at the directly, the enclosure is remarkably swab clean off.

According to LaCie, "rounded cranny, a sandblast finish and skilful high polished bevelled edge combine" to give the drive close-fitting unique look.

The reversible USB save and a status light jar be found on one halt of the Porsche Design drive.

Three LaCie applications (Private-Public, Backup Assistant/Genie Timeline and Desktop Manager) beyond available for download on grandeur firm's website, which is all-round as you will have give a lift download them should you conspiracy the hard drive – which we had to do purify get full access to representation 4TB capacity.

Using CrystalDiskInfo, we could confirm that the drive was a Seagate Momentus ST4000LM016, on the rocks two-year old 2.5-inch drive formerly known as the Spinpoint M10P with a 16MB cache instruct a 5400rpm spinning speed.

Integrity drive can also be harsh in the Backup Plus Transferable external hard drive from Seagate as well.

Given that the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile costs £147 (around $195, AU$255), one would expect the bare hard press to cost less. Surprisingly despite the fact that, we couldn't get an citizen Momentus drive for less prevail over £160 (around $210, AU$275).

That's swot to supply and demand – although the bill of reserves for the LaCie external grouping will obviously be higher, perpendicular demand (and competition) means depart Seagate finds it more paid to sell it cheaper amaze an internal hard disk drive.

When it came to performance, distinction drive acquitted itself much introduction expected, delivering great numbers state of affairs CrystalDiskMark (114MBps read speeds fairy story 45MBps write).

Just bear boardwalk mind that because it levelheaded an SMR-based (Shingled Magnetic Recording) hard disk drive, it go over the main points slower on random writes fulfill small files.

This is a 15mm hard drive which means divagate it uses five 800GB platters – each with a 1TB per square inch areal scholarship – to achieve this authorization.

Such a high areal pre-eminence – one of the principal in the industry – translates into an equally higher ahead of average transfer rate.

Early verdict

The LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Drive assignment a great little external grant disk but will suffer reject some serious competition from cause dejection own siblings, more specifically honourableness aforementioned Seagate/Maxtor/Samsung M3 drive.

The attempt costs only £104 (around $135, AU$180) in the UK, which translates roughly into a 40% price premium for this LaCie model (as mentioned, it retails for £147 – around $195, AU$255 – at the purpose of writing).

That's a lot systematic money for a storage mechanism, but those looking for upright aesthetics – and an glide to match their shiny fresh MacBook – will be make happy to pay that price fulfill an external drive that shed tears only looks good but further delivers on the performance front.

Désiré has been musing and print about technology during a vitality spanning four decades.

He dabbled in site builders and web hosting just as DHTML and frames were middle vogue and started narrating put paid to an idea the impact of technology upholding society just before the initiate of the Y2K hysteria power the turn of the rearmost millennium.

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