LaCie Porsche Design P'9220 500GB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive 301998

Pros: Cool-to-the-touch with a modern, brushed dark-gunmetal finish (it's genuine aluminum) -- White LED activity light looks pretty slick -- Feels very well built -- Stands up on it's own -- Runs quietly -- Files transfer QUICK thanks to USB 3.0 -- Plug-and-play on Windows 7 -- Size of a smartphone, so it's very portable -- No power cord req'd. / Uses only the USB cable

Cons: The USB 3.0 cable! It's 21" long, which if you actually measure that out, means you can't place it far from your PC/Mac should you have that requirement. Of course, many people don't keep these things plugged in all the time, especially if it's just a backup drive, so a short cable won't bother everyone.

Other Thoughts: I really liked the minimal styling, which is very modern and detailed for what is otherwise just another external hard drive. The aluminum case is laser-etched with "Porsche Design" insignia, which is Porsche's after-market design house, and it really made no impact on my decision to buy this thing; it simply caught my eye, so I knew it would match my silver/black PC environment nicely.

HOWEVER. This *hard drive* was shipped in a padded envelope. Is a small, semi-cushioned box too much to ask for when shipping a *hard drive*, which can be sensitive to shocks...?

Pros: Feels sturdy, great brushed metal finish.

Cons: Short USB 3.0 cable; Worked fine until OS X really messed it up (more on that below)

Other Thoughts: This could be an issue that was caused by OS X, and could mean the drive itself is not at fault.

It was running great for three weeks until one day I unplugged it from my laptop (it had the lid closed.) I then opened the lid and it gave me the "The drive was not properly ejected before removal" message, and when I went to plug the drive back in, it wouldn't work. So now, it won't recognize on my laptop OR my girlfriends laptop. Now I have to install bootcamp to get windows running to see if I can get it reading on that ( I formatted it NTFS so it could work in both Windows and MAC OSX with the Paragon NTFS software.)

Hopefully the drive is still good and it will read in Windows.

(PS, why does Apple insist their software use this ridiculous eject drive system? Windows has been doing fine without it for years.)

Pros: Great design, feels sturdy, awesome brushed metal finish.
Hard drive worked (I do note, WORKED, more on that below) great after I formatted it NTFS to use on both OS X and WIN7 (using Paragon NTFS) while switching between OS's on my macbook pro.

Cons: Really short usb 3.0 cord, and it's pretty stiff, but I haven't yet really needed a longer one. So it works for now just fine.
Considering it needs a lot of power, won't work with plugging it into a USB hub that is itself not externally powered (that's my assumption.)

Other Thoughts: I had this thing working for three weeks just fine, then one day it got unplugged from my macbook when the lid was closed. I opened it up and it gave me that "The disk wasn't properly ejected before removal" dialogue. I figured I'd just plug it back in, but I got nothing. Now, neither mine nor my girlfriend's laptops recognize it when we plug it in using OS X. So this could be not the drive's failt---it could be Apple's insistence that external hard drives in the 21st century must be manually ejected. (Somehow, Windows has been allowing hot-swappable drives on their OS for over a decade and have never had a problem with it) So I'll have to reformat my laptop and reinstall with boot camp to get Windows running to check the drive's integrity.

I'll check back in with a final review if I find this hard drive is busted, which means thank goodness I paid for the warranty.