LaCie's d2 Quadra has a front-mounted button that launches the included Retrospect Express backup program or an application of your choice. It's the only disk in the group with eSATA, USB Hi-Speed, FireWire 400 and 800 ports.
The d2 did consistently well in our tests, no matter which interface was used. It was the fastest USB Hi-Speed disk in our small-files tests and the second-fastest desktop disk in our large-files tests. It was also the second-fastest FireWire 400 disk overall.
Using FireWire 800, the d2 copied large files at 55.86MB/s and small files at 19.66MB/s, which is astonishingly quick. With eSATA we transferred large files at 74.79MB/s, which was beaten only by Iomega's drive in RAID 0, and small files at a quick 17.33MB/s.
The d2 Quadra is incredibly fast and feels well made, but it's pricy at 32p per gigabyte. Unless you need the ultimate in performance, Buffalo's DriveStation is a better buy.
