[CES 2014] External hard drives and USB flash drives are something we don’t necessarily think too much about in terms of design. However LaCie is a company that has not been shy about styling their products as we have seen them collaborate with Porsche on hard drives before, which is why it is not surprising, and somewhat of a delight, to see LaCie announce a new external hard drive in the form of the Sphere. As the name and the photos indicate, this is a hard drive that is atypical in design and spherical in shape, courtesy of a design collaboration with Christofle, a French luxury brand that is known for their work with silver.
The hard drive is enclosed in a sphere of silver-plated steel and sports a highly reflective finish, which we presume will be a massive fingerprint magnet, but that’s the price one has to pay for beauty, right? The hard drive will plug into computers via USB 3.0, ensuring fast read and write speeds, and will also come with blue LED light in the front that will indicate the drive’s status. Apart from being just pretty to look at, the Sphere will come with 1TB of storage and features such as Backup Assistant, Private-Public for password protection, and Eco Mode for energy saving. Pricing was not mentioned but the Sphere will be available in the first quarter of 2014.
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