The drive is plug-and-play compatible with Macs and PCs that feature native FireWire ports, and should work equally well with Mac OS and various flavors of Windows.
The new drive sports a 3.5 inch 7200 RPM mechanism that’s connected to FireWire via an IDE/ATAPI bridge chipset. The drive offers an access time of 9 milliseconds, and can perform at a sustained transfer rate of up to 14 Megabytes per second. The LaCie 75GB drive sports an enclosed integrated power supply and two 6-pin FireWire connections.
The new drive’s large capacity and fast access makes it ideal for digital video, according to LaCie — the 75GB drive can store up to 5 hours of video.
The drive itself ships with a FireWire cable to connect it up to a Mac or PC, and includes LaCie’s Silverlining drive utility software. Pricing was not immediately available.
The new drive joins LaCie’s existing line of external FireWire hard drives, including 20GB and 45GB models. The company also makes “PocketDrive” portable units with capacities up to 30GB.