Serial ATA wasnt initially designed to function as an external storage connectivity option, but with products such as LaCies d2 Hard Drive SATA, thats about to change.
The 250GB version of the LaCie d2 Hard Drive SATA, which shipped late last month, is priced at $339 and comes bundled with cables and the LaCie SATA PCI card. LaCies is the first SATA card Ive seen that has external ports, enabling it to work as an external storage option. (For users who need more storage capacity, a 400GB version of the product is available for $549.)
On the rear of the LaCie PCI card are two SATA ports and a pair of power ports that can be used to power two d2 Hard Drive SATAs—eliminating the need for extra AC adapters to supply the power.
In my tests, the LaCie SATA PCI card and hard drive were relatively easy to set up. The LaCie d2 Hard Drive SATAs small size and light weight make it very useful for carrying large files from the home to the office.
Performancewise, a single LaCie d2 Hard Drive SATA can write sequential data at speeds of a bit more than 56MB per second, which makes it a good solution for doing high-speed backups.
The LaCie Hard Drive d2 Serial ATA is compatible with Windows and Macintosh OS 10.x.
More information is at www.lacie.com.
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