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LaCie Now Offering 10TB "5 Big" NAS

Andy Salisbury — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:25:23 -0500

This week LaCie announced yet another addition to their line of network storage drives with the 2big Network and the 5big Network.

They both feature Gigabit Ethernet, seven RAID modes, as well as “improved performance, enhanced features, comprehensive backup support, and extreme capacity expansion.” The 2big will offer up to 4TB of storage, while the 5big can load up with up to 10TB of storage through five hot-swappable drives.

Both of these are available today, and will start at $319.99 (2big) and $799.99 (5big). However, if you want the whopping 10TB version of the 5big, it’ll run you $2099.99.

Image Credt: LaCie

LaCie Adds Big Disk, d2 Network to NAS Lineup

Andy Salisbury — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:00:51 -0500

Sure, you wanted to add some extra network storage with a NAS, but you just weren’t able to find anything stylish enough. Well, if a basic aluminum exterior with a single blue light is your definition of fashionable, look no further.

LaCie’s Big Disk and d2 network storage systems pack 1.5TB of storage (with an eSATA port for expansion) and 3TB of storage (by slapping two drives together using RAID 0) respectively. Both of them support a multitude of backup software, and play nice with DLNA-compliant devices.

The d2 Network and Big Disk Network are currently available for $190 and $380 respectively.

Image Credit: LaCie

LaCie DataShare Turns Puny SD Cards Into Burly Thumb Drives

Andy Salisbury — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:32:33 -0500

You’ve got a digital camera, you’ve got a cell phone, and along with these you’ve probably got a few SD cards laying around that you just don’t use anymore. It looks like someone at LaCie had the very same issue, and decided to turn them into an extremely easy to use flash drive.

The LaCie DataShare is compatible with all SD and MicroSD cards currently on the market (SD/SDHC/Class 1 to 6), and comes with two separate sides, that let you discern your private data from your public data.

If this looks like something you could make use out of, be sure to check it out on LaCie’s site here, where it’s currently on sale for $9.99.

Image Credit: LaCie

LaCie 8X Blu-Ray Burner Lets You Write 50GB of Data at Over 259Mbps

Paul Lilly — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:38:05 -0600

LaCie's newest Blu-ray burner might as well be called the 'Top Gun' model because the company obviously felt the need for speed when designing it. The newly announced LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive gooses the burn rating to 8X, or double the speed of its previous high-capacity Blu-ray drive.

"With the doubling of the speed to burn Blu-ray discs, video professionals will be able to spend more time creating content and less time on production," said Christelle Dexet, Multimedia Product Manager for LaCie. "And for those who need to safely store large quantities of information for extended periods of time on secure removable media, the LaCie d2 Blu-ray Drive is an ideal solution."

The external drive supports both USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 and can burn up to 50GB on a single dual-layer BD-R disc. DVD recording checks in at 16X, CDs at 48X, and dual-layer DVD at 8X.

LaCie's d2 Blu-ray burner is available now starting at $450 and comes bundled with Easy Media Creator 10 and Toast 9 Titanium software.

Image Credit: LaCie via Slashgear

LaCie 730

Tom Edwards — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:20:55 -0600

We had the LaCie 730 delivered to the Lab as a possible contender for our upgrading feature (page 25)—at $5,000 and change it’s certainly a comfortable fit at the high end of the price spectrum. Of course, it wasn’t just the price that intrigued us. The LaCie 730 includes a number of features that set it apart from other monitors we’ve reviewed—as well as one oversight that keeps it from attaining our highest praise.

While most monitors that come to the Lab sport 6- or 8-bit panels, the 730 has a 14-bit panel, which should greatly increase the color depth of this monitor. Additionally, the 730 includes an LED backlight rather than the more typical cold-cathode fluorescent backlight. An LED backlight should produce a truer black than a CCF because unlike the CCF, LEDs can switch on and off while a CCF is always on (for this same reason, an LED backlight should also reduce the amount of light seepage at the edges of a monitor). However, the first LED backlight monitor we reviewed, ViewSonic’s VLED221wm (May 2008), was able to create the darkest black we had ever seen but couldn’t differentiate the darkest grays in our grayscale test.

LaCie’s 730 had no such issues, displaying clear separation between shades at both the light and dark ends of the spectrum in our grayscale test. In our DisplayMate tests, the 730’s white and light grays weren’t as bright as those displayed by our current high-end Best of the Best champion, Gateway’s XHD3000 (reviewed December 2007), but when we put the monitors side by side for our digital photo comparison, there was no contest: The 730 produced the most vibrant, rich colors we’ve ever seen in our monitor tests. We noticed, in particular, that the 730 did a much better job of differentiating between shades of orange and red. In fact, this 14-bit monitor sports a 123 percent color gamut, well beyond the 72 percent standard for most LCDs.

Through our synthetic and real-world tests, the LaCie 730 seemed to be best in class, showing rich colors in photos and no evidence of banding or color-tracking errors; however, as we moved to our Blu-ray test, we discovered the monitor’s one true weakness: It lacks HDCP. While software fixes such as AnyDVD (www.slysoft.com) can alleviate this problem, the LaCie 730 cannot natively handle commercial high-def video. The lack of input options is also a small knock against the 730; the monitor includes DVI and USB, but neither HDMI nor DisplayPort.

If the boss-man purchased this monitor for your workplace, you’d be thrilled, but if you want a multipurpose monitor for photo and video editing as well as high-def movie watching, you’ll likely want to look elsewhere. If you’re willing to step down a bit in size, LaCie’s 24-inch 724 has the same 123 percent color gamut, supports HDCP, and will cost you just $2,650.

LaCie 5big Network Drive Holds 5 Drives, Won't Call You Dave

Andy Salisbury — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:51:28 -0500

LaCie has always been good about their design, and that trend looks like it’s going to continue with designer Neil Poulton’s HAL 9000 inspired 5big Network Drive.

The 5big is aimed at small and medium sized workgroups with nerves of steel, and a need for a ton of storage. It will feature five hot-swappable Serial ATA drive bays that can hold up to 7.5 terabytes of storage total (more than HAL 9000 had, I bet). Should 7.5 terabytes not be enough, you can always add additional drives through the included USB ports.

The drives that you decide to put in the 5big can be put in several different raid arrays, including RAID 5, RAID 5+Spare, RAID 6, RAID 10 and RAID 0. And thanks to an included Gigabit Ethernet port, anyone connected to your local network can access it.

And don’t worry, should you decide to get a new network drive somewhere along the line you won’t be having the same issues that a certain Dave Bowman did.

Image Credit: LaCie

We Covet the Awesome $4600 30" LED LCD from Lacie

Paul Lilly — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 09:51:29 -0500

The LED revolution has begun, and we're not talking about those flashing lights emitting from your PC's chassis. Display technology is seeing a shift towards LED backlighting, one in which Dell says will account for all of its notebooks by 2010, and the notebook market as a whole is expected to see 30-40 percent penetration by next year. On the desktop front, Lacie is already there and the company's newest display lays out a spec sheet that's hard not to drool over.

Lacie's new 700 series, which has its sights set on professionals rather than gamers, is available in 20, 24, and 30-inch form (models 720, 724, and 730 respectively). Each model sports an RGB-LED backlight the company claims will "mimic real life by embedding some of today's most advanced display technologies."

On paper, Lacie appears to be right. The 700 series sports ultra-wide gamuts of up to 123 percent of Adobe RGB, a backlight stabilizer technology capable of adjusting settings in real time, and 14-bit Gamma Correction lookup tables which, according to Lacie, allows the displays to produce improved gradient rendering without banding and smoother color transitions "that are 64 times more precise than on consumer-quality 8-bit monitors."

As for pricing, brace yourself. The 4:3 720 model will run $1600 sans hood, or $2040 with. Tack on a color meter and the tally comes to $2290. The 16:10 724 version runs $2300 ($2930 with hood, $3180 with color meter), and the flagship 730 smacks you in the wallet for $4600 ($5850 with hood, $6110 with color meter).

Image Credit: Lacie

LaCie Ethernet Big Disk

David Murphy — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:26:40 -0600

The 2TB LaCie Ethernet Big Disk is appropriately named, we suppose. Other potential monikers: the LaCie Ethernet Big Headache, the LaCie Ethernet Sucks at Networking, or perhaps even the LaCie Ethernet Where Did My Drive Go. We jest, but there’s truth to our ramblings–the LaCie Ethernet Big Disk is horrific as a network-attached storage device, mainly due to our frequent failures to get Windows to even see the drive.

The included CD comes with a bunch of manuals, but the meat and potatoes is a small configuration application. You load it up to find your LaCie drive (sure beats typing an IP address into your browser, we suppose), and a single button-press launches the drive’s web-based configuration utility. Play with the settings all you like–there’s not much to do, save for enabling the Ethernet Big Disk’s media server.

The real fun comes when it’s time to find the device on your network. We tried looking for it in the default MSHome network path–no luck. We tried following the manual’s instructions and typed in the device’s name (\\EthernetBD). Zilch. We finally tried using the device’s actual IP address, which let us access the device (named Ethernet_bd, unlike what’s stated in the manual).

The Big Disk delivered acceptable speeds, but not anything to cheer about. The device lies squarely in third place in this roundup of four, but speeds are irrelevant if you can’t transfer files to or from the device using Network Neighborhood. Since many network boxes can connect just fine 100 percent of the time, we believe the Big Disk has a Big Fault.