Pro: Has that Porsche name on it.
Con: Big deal - still looks rather unimpressive.

Suggested use: backup??
Actual use: how could anyone use this hard drive for back up when it's so unreliable! And slow, even under the best of times!

Drive died after 2 years of infrequent use (only when I'm editing my home movies) or backing up my documents. While a recovery was possible, that kind of defeats the purpose of 'backup,' doesn't it?

Second: slow. Often, it took about 10-15 minutes to move a 1 GB file (about twice what it took on another portable HD I've used).

Conclusion: Avoid.

I don't understand people who leave this on all the time and then get surprised when it stops working. It heats up quickly. It's not meant to be a computer. External hard drives are for backing up files. I have a regular desktop computer. Then, every week, I turn on my Lacie hard drive, back up my documents, then turn it off. It works perfectly.

I bought this (LaCie 160GB USB2.0 Desktop Hard Drive ( 300700U ) P3 design by FA Porsche) drive by searching on drives for a Mac. First I found that it as formatted will not accept many Mac-acceptable file names. Then I learned that reformatting can only be done from Classic. Not worth my time, or yours.

bought my lacie drive 1 month ago as a slave drive for my apple ibook. so far, it works pretty good. the speed is a bit slow though. its only good as a backup. it took me 5 minutes to get it running after receiving it.

My 2 yr. old Dell Desktop has been acting up for a while and was getting worse. It was crashing quite often and all my peripherals: printer, scanners and cd burner were being affected. I spent many a weekends trying to fix the problems to no avail. So for 2005 I resolved for clean sweep of my computer. This involved formatting C and re-install windows, Ahhh what a cleansing experience it was!

I needed to backup all my files first. Since my CD writer was malfunctioning, I had to find another way to backup all my files, about 20GB worth. I've always had this fear of opening my
computer case so I decided to buy an external device to house my files. My options were: a 20GB Apple Ipod (for temporary storage, then use it for music), an external dvd burner, an external hard drive. I decided that the simplest and most economical way was to buy an external USB hardrive. I chose the LaCie 160GB USB2.0 Desktop Hard Drive. It was the cheapest drive per GB here at Amazon.

The LaCie Hard Drive turned out to be just fantastic. It was study in simplicity. What you get is a plain grey box about the size of a VHS casette. Now I don't know what this "Porsche Design" is all about, how hard is it to create a grey box? There are 2 holes in the back, 1 for USB, one for power and a on/off switch. I plugged in the power and usb cord, flipped the switch and VOILA! Windows assigned the next drive letter and I clicked and dragged everything to the LaCie drive. And that was all there was to it. I didn't even install the software that came with the it.

I've no problems so far, I highly recommend this product giving it the highest rating.

ps. will update in 6 mos. to address reliability concerns.