LaCie Boosts its Rugged Disks to 500 GB

LaCie has just announced a storage capacity boost across its rugged HDD line-up. The new drives, signed by industrial designer Neil Poulton, now come with 500 GB of storage space in a shock-resistant form factor.

The drives are aimed at mobile users who are always on the road. LaCie's Rugged series of portable hard drives are stuffed in a scratch-resistant aluminum shell with orange rubber bumpers that act as a shock damper.

Under the ultra-rugged case, LaCie included a high-capacity 2.5-inch Hitachi TravelStar 5K500. The 500 GB drives come in multiple flavors and include USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 versions for high-speed data transfers. The drives are fully mobile, given the fact that they are powered via the USB or FireWire bus. Low-power USB hubs are still a problem, but the manufacturer inlcuded an Y-shaped adapter that lets the drive draw extra power from an adjacent port.

"The Rugged Hard Disk is one of LaCie’s most popular products and has been so for a number of years," said Nolwenn Rozen, LaCie Mobile Product Manager. "We recently upgraded capacity to 320GB, and now with recent innovations, we are able to increase it again. With all LaCie products, we will continue to push the envelope on capacity as technology permits," Rozen continued.

LaCie ships the 500 GB rugged disk with bundled software applications, such as the LaCie Setup Assistant, a home-brewed utility that lets the user format the drive according to their hardware platform (HFS for Mac, FAT32 for Windows or even FAT 16 for cross-platform environments).

"LaCie Rugged All Terrain drives are an integral part of our workflow in the field for our travel show," said Art Wolfe, acclaimed photographer and Host of Travels to the Edge public television series. "From the deserts in West Africa to the Antarctic Peninsula and Madagascar to Nepal, I depend on these devices for safe, reliable storage and wouldn’t travel without them."

The new drives are available immediately via the company's retail outlets. The USB 2.0 version comes with an estimative price tag of $339.99, while the USB 2.0/FireWire-400/FireWire-800 model is priced at $399.99.

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