The days when quality devices were enough for worldwide recognition are long gone, or so it seems. There should be a special category for such devices, such as hardware fashion, or fashionable hardware or whatever. We have talked about Pinafarina having designed an external unit for Seagate's USB disk, now it's Neil Poulton's time to do it for LaCie. Neil Poulton is "notorious" for his industrial design skills, especially the way he uses light in his creations.

LaCie has just unveiled their external unit, named the Hard Disk, Design by Neil Poulton. The disc uses USB 2.0 connectivity for computer communication and comes in different storage capacities, ranging from 320GB to 1TB.

"This user-friendly, trendy looking device offers maximum storage capabilities for a desktop drive that is one of the most compact designs on the market today", LaCie said. "The integrated blue LED adds a science fiction dimension not common with other drives."

Neil Poulton has done a pretty job here. The drive's design is simple, monolith-like, and perfectly rectangular. The enclosure has a polished finish and is completely mirror-black, with a blue ambient LED strip situated under the drive's enclosure. The disc is sophisticated in its simplicity, but at the same time subtle and inobtrusive, which gives the drive an excellent blend with the Home Theater equipment and setups, as well as workstations. The disk operates quietly, since the fan has been replaced with vent holes on the bottom for natural airflow.

"The idea was to design a polished black marble slab. Mysterious. Impervious. Black mirror finish. Giving no idea to its function", designer Neil Poulton added.

The drive comes bundled with the 1-click backup software that works both on Mac and PC platforms and enables the user to back up the entire system at the expense of a single click. The software also offers support for the Time Machine, Apple's new feature implemented in Leopard that allows users to keep a persistent backup of their Mac and then restore their files should anything go wrong.