Seagate blends fashion and storage in new consumer range

Would you pay $2400 for a shiny new one Terabyte external hard drive — if it was a fashion statement?

Would you pay $2400 for a shiny new one Terabyte external hard drive — if it was a fashion statement?

That’s the rationale for Seagate’s LaCie Chrome, showcased today at a consumer products media preview in Sydney. “This is the concept car of external storage and it’s a trophy. People are going to see this and say: ‘Wow, look at that’,” said Sam Zavaglia, Seagate senior field applications engineer.

Seagate’s LaCie Chrome

The LaCie Chrome has pluses and minuses. Despite it’s hefty price, it’s not usable as network storage; it’s for plugging into a single computer. And it’s double the price of, say, a sophisticated 8-bay NAS (network attached storage) box which typically offer dozens of features such as multi-user support, web hosting, backups, security monitoring and private cloud as well as general storage, a processor and an operating system.

However the Chrome brings with it the promise of fast transfer speeds: Seagate says up to 940 Megabits per second, which is nine times that of the more modest Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim. The Chrome comprises two SATA solid state drives preconfigured in RAID 0 and is capable of fast USB-C to USB-C transfers, as well as USB-C to USB 3.0.

Apart from its shiny aluminium enclosure, it has magnetised cable management designed to hide the cables, and a magnetic stand that makes it easy to remove the device.

That may or may not be enough for you to climb onto the hard drive fashion bandwagon. It depends on whether shelling out so much for your desktop configuration to look good really matters.

Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim drive.

Seagate had other offerings for those with more modest budgets. It showcased 1TB and 2TB versions of the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim drive with fashioned platinum and gold cases. Despite its spinning platters, the 2TB version is just 9.6mm thick.

It connects to both USB3.0 and USB-C ports on a computer, and there’s a driver available so that enables them to work on both PCs and Macs. There’s also a different Mac version formatted in FAT. Colours tweaked to match Mac livery.

You pay $129 for 1 terabyte, $179 for 2 TBs.

Seagate Innov8 is an 8 terabyte drive comprising 6 internal hard drive platters in an aluminium case.

For around $570 you soon can buy a Seagate Innov8, an 8 terabyte drive in an aluminium case comprising 6 internal hard drive platters. It looks like a stack of place mats. The Innov8 connects to a computer via USB-C or USB3.1.

You’ll need those ports as the Innov8 doesn’t connect to an external power source. It only manages to work with USB3.1 by having an internal battery which spins up the platters. The battery is then topped up via USB3.1.

Seagate LaCie Porsche

There was also the more portable LaCie Porsche Design ranges. The mobile range comprises 1, 2 and 4 terabyte drives that are both USB-C and USB3.0 compatible. They cost $184.99, $249.99 and $389.99 respectively.

Desktop variants have 4,5 and 8 terabyte capacities and use external power. They can recharge a USB-C equipped laptop. Their pricing is yet to be released.

In all cases the drives work with a single computer and are not network storage.