LaCie's rugged rubber drive hits 500GB
Rubber baby hard drive bumper
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Rubber hard disk fetishist LaCie has upped the capacity of its ruggedly designed portable drive to half a terabyte capacity.
Quite resembling an orange inflatable raft, the unit now packs a 500GB Hitachi Travelstar 2.5-inch drive into the Neil Poulton-designed chassis.
The LaCie Rugged features a scratch-resistant aluminum shell with a shock-resistant rubber bumper — so you can store data as well as wield a blunt weapon without the inconvenience of switching hands.

Break your backs and crack your oars, men
Like the rest of the Rugged line, the drive comes with either a USB 2.0 interface or a unit with FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 interfaces. They're also bus-powered, so there's no need to haul around a power supply.
The price of the unit depends on whether it's purchased directly or through one of the company's channels. LaCie explained to us that gives its retailers a bit of a discount to appease them.
The USB 2.0-only unit goes for $300 (£150) or $340 from its online shop. The FireWire/USB 2.0 unit sells for $350 (£203) or $400 directly. ®
COMMENTS
Scratch Resistant?
WTF?
I have one (not the 500GB one), and this is NOT aluminum (or AL-YOU-MINI-UM, as you guys put it). It is cheap plastic with sprayed-on metal paint, and the paint is already scratching off. I'd post a pic of it, but that can't happen here, so I'll post one of PH instead, as she has more style than substance.
All that being said, it works well enough for me. I've been using it for quite some time.
Missing the point
Yes you can get cheaper drives and you may also be able to get more reliable ones, but you will be hard pushed to find nicer looking ones.
You're paying the premium for the design.
As for reliability, I've got a TB of LaCie drives at home now, the oldest being 2 years old and I've never had a crash.

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