Lacie portable external hard drives: the best design on the market?

I recently saw these:
Amazon.com: LaCie Petit 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 301895: Electronics

I really like the design.
1. Aluminum casing to keep the drive cool
2. Power input jack to power the HDD to avoid motor stress.

Only thing that would make it better is some sort of rubber casing around the edges to protect against shocks.

 

LaCie's look great - but all the LaCie's I've bought (and a few I know from clients) have gone belly up in a few years (4 units in total). Not only the HD, but the electronics as well.

I think the electronics just do not protect the HD from any surges/etc. Nor do they have adequate protection from themselves either (their own boards failing/shorting out and taking the HD with them).

Highly not recommended (by me!).

 

"best case design" might be a better description.

rubber bumpers on the case might be offering more casework protection than drive protection.

If you are looking for an external drive that is 'safer' than others, be sure to get one (or build your own) whose internal disk drive has integrated g-shock sensors that pull the read/write heads back and shuts down the drive when it's knocked around.

 

the cases look good but their not reputable or reliable.. I suggest Western Digital.. mine works well and is very cool..

 

Aluminum casing doesn't lend itself to a cool case as it disperses the heat through the metal.

 

Yup; the aim is for it to act as a heatsink and take heat away from the drive.

 

Lacie make the best looking drives. They do make a drive with a rubber casing but it isn't as strong as the proper toughdrives or as pretty as that one.

 

Actually it makes it worse since it just makes the entire case hot to touch. Without proper airflow, the heat isn't dispersed (though it is open so that there is more surface area). In a room it generally isn't much of an issue as the HDD itself doesn't produce much heat but it can be a problem in certain situations. It's similar to a situation a little while back a few users here posted how heatsinks on notebook memory increased the heat of their memory as opposed to w/o the heatsinks (due to lack of airflow over those parts). Also, several MBP owners report issues regarding heat from their notebook due to the choice of chassis material.