Introduction

I really don't know why external hard drives are so appealing to me. For a long time, I thought they were pretty silly for a builder. Think about it, excepting models that have a one-touch backup button on the drive itself, there really aren't any advantages to having an external drive over having an additional drive in your rig, at least in my case. I always have more than one physical drive in my rig. If I wanted to use a drive for backup for all three of my computers, I could just send files to an extra internal drive through my network. The external drive really isn't any more or less vulnerable to viruses and the like. I don't travel with files, and if I did, a flash drive would be much more convienent, you can get them up to 16 gigs now. An external drive takes up space on my desk, which is usually pretty cluttered as it is.

I guess the only reason I really can think of for a PC geek to need one is lack of space in the case for another drive. Most mid-towers now hold 4-5 internal drives (my Silverstone will hold seven) but that space is quickly eaten up by RAID arrays. A couple of RAID 0 arrays, or a RAID 0+1 will instantly eat up four spaces in your 3.5" internal bay. Another reason is that hard drives have become much more reliable, and it is practical to continue using your old hard drives in your new computer. When I build myself a new rig, I usually buy a new hard drive and recycle an old one or two into the rig as storage drives.

Yet, something about external drives makes me like them. I guess because never having owned a Mac (I did play around with a new Apple IIe about the time I bought my first PC, and that is the last Apple product I have ever touched), I see an external drive more as a gadget than a functional item, and I love gadgets.

Of course, for the average computer user that has outgrown his hard drive, an external drive can pump a significant amount of extra lifespan into his rig. And we all know how important backing your data up is.

Packaging

I really didn't know quite what to expect when the package arrived. It wasn't that much bigger than an external drive enclosure, so I knew it couldn't be packaged in the typical foam or cardboard molding.

Turns out that it was well protected in thick foam eggcrate that lined the entire box. As this drive was shipped directly from LaCie for Geeks.com, I am assuming that this is the normal packaging for the D2 Extreme.

There is a fair amount of stuff included with the D2, an AC adapter, a baseplate, software, instructions, and several cables.