If you bought a new MacBook Pro (or really, any Thunderbolt 3-equipped PC), there's a good chance that you're looking for high-capacity external storage that takes advantage of your system's newer, speedier ports. Well, you're in luck: As is its custom, LaCie is launching a pair of external drives that promise a load of extra space using newer interfaces. The centerpiece is the d2 Thunderbolt 3. While the hard disk itself is only slightly faster than before (240MB/s) and won't come close to saturating USB-C or Thunderbolt 3, the choice of connector makes it easy to daisy-chain other devices without sacrificing performance. You can hook up a 5K display, two 4K displays or five additional Thunderbolt 3 drives, so you may only have to plug one cable into your computer to power your entire setup.
The new d2 isn't cheap, but it packs a lot of storage. Prices start at $430 for a 6TB version, and you can scale up to 10TB if you're really hurting for space. LaCie will ship it sometime in the first quarter of the year.
And if you're less interested in daisy-chaining and more in a drive that can survive real-world abuse, you're covered. LaCie is introducing a Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C drive that packs both an integrated legacy Thunderbolt cable and a USB-C port to deliver its full potential on a relatively wide range of systems. You can get conventional hard disk storage between 2TB and 5TB if capacity is paramount, but there are also 500GB and 1TB solid-state models for times when speed matters most; at 510MB/s, the 1TB model is about 30 percent faster than LaCie's earlier models. The line begins at $250 for the 2TB drive, and you should see the whole Rugged series arrive alongside the d2 in the first quarter.
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