LaCie unveils external drive range
P3 range priced to compete with internal hard drives
PC and Mac storage peripheral specialist LaCie is aiming to capitalise on the rapidly growing demand for external storage with the release of an aggressively priced new range of designer drives.
The sleek P3 range of external products, designed by Porsche Design, have been manufactured with speed in mind, and are being priced to compete with internal hard drives.
The LaCie Hard Drives start at £69 excluding VAT for a 40GB USB 2.0 model, and capacities extend to 250GB.
The products support USB 2.0 and FireWire, and are aimed at users who want back-up and storage space for large multimedia files.
LaCie UK general manager George Leptos claimed that the hard drives are "a fast way to upgrade a PC and give users the flexibility to move data between computers easily".
With the exception of the entry-level 40GB models, the range is built around fast, 7200rpm 3.5in disk drives. Data transfer speeds of 480Mbps and 400Mbps are supported by USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces respectively.
Sustained data transfer speeds of up to 34Mbps are possible with the USB 2.0 models, making them suitable for transferring large video files quickly.
The external hard-drive marketplace is getting crowded, with Seagate's entrance last September, hot on the heels of rivals Maxtor and Western Digital.
"All of the key hard-drive players have introduced these encased, super-high capacity drives because there is a need in the market for large-capacity external back-up and storage," said Denise DeLeon, senior analyst for storage technology at iSuppli.
"External hard disk drives have really taken off in both the commercial and consumer markets and part of the vendors' plans is to supplant other storage media, such as recordable CD drives and Jaz drives, among others."
Leptos added that external hard drives are growing quickly at the moment, particularly in the PC sector.
"In the next six months the majority of hard disk drive add-ons will be external because most people don't want to - or can't - upgrade an internal hard disk drive," he said.