14 DAY TRIAL // Putting data in the cloud, as in on online servers, is a method of storage that has been getting quite popular nowadays, but there are some drawbacks to it, something that LaCie tried to address.
There have been quite a few device announcement over the years when a company or another managed, with differing degrees of success, to merge two product concepts together.
HDDs with NAND Flash storage are just one example, and one could say that Smart TVs are also some form of PC/display combination.
In this instance, LaCie is offering a hybrid HDD, only not of the sort one would expect after seeing platter spinners merged with ODDs, SSDs and such things.
Instead, the CloudBox is essentially a hard disk drive that is also connected to the cloud and will automatically copy whatever is stored on it onto the space available online.
Granted, users could very well do this themselves, but it can take up to several days to actually upload files, plus a lot of user input.
The LaCie CloudBox needs one to only back the computer data of their choice to the drive and the latter will do the rest.
Restoring files can later be done from anywhere and from any Internet connection, since accessing the online LaCiee CloudBox account is the only necessary process. What's more, up to 10 previous versions of files and folders can be saved.
The company has already set up the official product page of the CloudBox on its website (interested users can go here to look at it).
The one thing that customers will have to do, besides just buying the drive, will be to also sign up for a one-year online backup contract that has to be renewed each year.
This means that, in addition to the $199.99 (this is the cost of the drive itself) prospective buyers will have to pay something extra.