LaCie 2TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive 301405U

Pros: The unit is small and has a well vented area for the drives. The price is definitely right.

Cons: The Drives and the Fan are EXTRA LOUD. I had it running overnight and it kept up the whole house, needed to do a backup or I would have turned it off. It works, but slowly at best.

Other Thoughts: The drive was going to be a network storage device shared through my DLink Router. After trying it out I guess it will be a USB direct storage for one of my PC's that are kept in a closet, and maybe ill soundproof the door....

Pros: I do not leave it on all the time but it is great for my monthly backups. I use another server for daily backups. No issues or lag at all. runs great!

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: wish was eSata

Pros: Large amount of storage, decent design

Cons: Fairly loud even while idling

Pros: SEE OTHER THOUGHTS

Cons: Poor quality drive and warranty... loud... old technology

Other Thoughts: Know this comes formated Fat32.

For those who complain about the Fat32:
This is done so people with Macs can read and WRITE to it too. Macs can read NTFS, but not write to it without expensive, buggy software. The Mac store here, on campus at Clemson, sells these for that reason.

I wish I could just buy the case, which looks good and sturdy, and add two WD Greens... and it had eSata

Pros: Huge storage capacity! Decent transfer speeds. Small footprint.

Cons: Only thing I can think of is the bright blue indicator light. Very Minor

Other Thoughts: I just purchased a second one today.

Pros: Let me say this, Its 2TB. I mean... really... that is a pro in all it's glory. Pretty darn fast too if you ask me. I would have liked to see e-sata but I knew about the lack of it when I bought it. Its right for the price. Sturdy. Nice metal case. Probably could throw the thing and it'd still work (I don't recommend this...) The warranty that comes with this thing is 1 year, plus 1 year of online backups... which is freakin' sweet. that way if ya screw the thing up, you can just retrieve your data online. Nice little perk.

Cons: Some of these people might think are cons, some might not. Here are just a few points. Its loud. And I don't mean just when the fan kicks on. It sounds like a computer all in itself. Also when the fan does kick on, its like twice as loud. Nothing I can't deal with though. Also... The hard drive itself makes some old school hard drive noises. Kinda freaky at first but ya get used to it. Although I admit, I'm working it pretty hard right now.

Other Thoughts: Other than what I listed, there's a few things that are neither pros or cons. The size of it is large, not huge but bigger than most external drives. This has to do with the fact that there are 2 HDDs plus a fan in there. The light just looks stupid. Not that I care, but its at the very bottom, and its not even centered. Not too bright, not to dim, just right on the plus side. USB cable that came with it, Mad small... But I have others so I wasn't concerned. Probably about a foot in length -- maybe a little longer. Great deal for the buy, I would have bought two, but I don't need much more than this (Although I say that now and next week this thing will be full). I will review it more in a few weeks since this is just my initial thoughts.

Pros: Lots of space (1.81 TB after format). I've left it running for a week solid and the case hardly gets warm and I've got it in a fairly enclosed area. It took just a couple of hours to send over 300gb to it.

Cons: Fan comes on pretty often and is a little loud but for a drive this size I can live with that. It comes formatted in a raid 0 config w/ a fat32 file system. It took all night to reformat to NTFS.

Other Thoughts: After reformatting to NTFS file system I've been pleased w/ this drive. I've streamed movies and music from it w/ no hicups what so ever. Gave it 4 eggs for the fat32 file system and having to spend the time to reformat.

Pros: Relatively fast for USB. At the time I bought it, this external bundle was much cheaper then buying 2 1TB hard drives plus an external enclosure.

Cons: Doesn't work well if left on 24 hours a day. The drive is very power hungry and generates lots of heat. I measured the enclosure with Kill-A-Watt and if I remember correctly the power consumption is 20-30 Watts idling, more when being accessed. I was unable to get Windows XP to power down the drives when not in use.

Other Thoughts: I have a mini-ITX server that I use for a website, home automation, e-mail server, and a file server. The case is very small but I wanted to have some large drives connected for storing video files. Rather then buying a separate NAS box, I thought I could use these drives. Like I said the power requirements are too high and the drives generate too much heat to keep on all the time.

I think these drives would work great for general backup which I think is more the intended purpose anyway.

Pros: None

Cons: Non-funtional

Other Thoughts: Reformated to NTFS, one of the drive inside failed after two hours (clicks of startup, then red drive failure led). Did get it to reformat to 1gb, no diagnostic s/w provided to see what the problem is.

Pros: Huge capacity

Cons: Die on the 29th day from the date of purchase.

Other Thoughts: I only used this drive maximum of 12 hours in the span of 29 days. Turned it off when not in use, and one day the dreaded red light came on indicating "drive failure", and that was it. Lost all those media files, pictures, etc. Extreme poor product from Lacie, buyer beware.