Digital Home Thoughts: LaCie Takes Big Disk Extreme+ to 2 TB

"LaCie has unwrapped its Big Disk Extreme+, sporting a 2 TB capacity, three interfaces (FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and USB), and bundled Retrospect backup software. Accessory and peripheral maker LaCie has taken the wraps off its Big Disk Extreme+ external hard drive, pushing the line's capacity to 2 TB. "LaCie is excited to introduce this high-capacity solution for professional users," said Olivier Mirloup, LaCie Hard Disk Drive Business Unit Manager, in a release. "The Big Disk Extreme+ is a triple threat with high-performance storage, high capacity and a user-friendly quick backup feature for data safety and recovery." The new unit offers three interfaces—two FireWire 800 ports, one FireWire 400 port, and a USB 2.0 port—along with a LaCie Shortcut Button which can be used to launch any document or application with just a press: we recommend that it launch the bundled EMC Retrospect backup program for either Windows or Mac OS X."



While the 2TB should have me salivating, I am very worried about the fact that they have the drives in a RAID 0 configuration. While it certainly gets you the higher performance, I usually tend to think of external hard drives as a safe and solid (albeit performant) backup solution. With a RAID 0 config, if you lose one drive, you have lost all your data. I would much prefer RAID 1, 5 or 1+0, or even JBOD to RAID 0 in a backup system that I believe LaCie is targetting. On a completely separate note - could LaCie use add any more adjectives to the name of this product (Big, Exterme, +)? :)