If you love neon pink or blue, the 60GB LaCie Skwarim portable hard drive could be the perfect mobile hard drive for you. Its fashionable exterior and small, square design that could easily fit in your back pocket make it a great product for on-the-go data transfers.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The drive attaches to your PC or laptop easily with a small USB adapter that's attached to the drive itself but doesn't extend or stretch at all. LaCie also supplies a longer USB cable if you need it. As with most LaCie drives, the One-Click backup software is included with the package.
- Drive type: mobile hard disk drive
- Capacities: 60GB (4,200rpm)
- Capacity of test unit: 30GB (please see Editor's note above)
- Cache: 2MB
- Dimensions: 3.3 x 3.3 x .5 inches (LHD); 3.5 ounces
- Notable design features: Square, textured body; neon color
- Connection options: USB 2.0/1.1
- OSes supported: Windows 98SE; Windows 2000 Pro; Windows ME; Windows XP Pro; Windows XP Home; Mac OS 9.x; Mac OS X or greater
- Software included: LaCie One-Click Backup Software, MacDrive
- Service/support: One-year limited warranty; toll-based phone support (Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., PT); registered tech support only via Web; e-mail to tech support via online form; Web site includes FAQs, manuals, and drivers
On CNET Labs' test bench, the 30GB LaCie Skwarim (the name, incidentally, is a play on that of its designer, Karim Rashid) performed up to par with transfer speeds. It took a little more than 21 minutes to write our 10GB test folder to its disks. The read tests took slightly longer than most drives we've tested--around 11minutes copying our 10GB folder back to the test machine. These are good scores for a very small and very portable external drive.
The LaCie Skwarim is a fun little drive with both style and portability. It should provide you with all the on-the-go storage you need.