Labs

Easily the most stylish appliance on test, the LaCie's minimalist aluminium design won't be an eyesore wherever you choose to install it. At the front, the power button lights up blue and subtly flashes whenever the disk is accessed.

The rear panel is almost as bare, with just the obligatory 10/100 Ethernet socket and a Type B USB port. It's a similar setup to the Freecom: the Ethernet Disk mini can either be used as a NAS appliance or directly connected to a USB 2 port for fast local storage.

As there are no Type A USB ports, the LaCie suffers in the features department, just like the Freecom. It means there's no print server and, since you can't connect additional disks, you're stuck with the 250GB capacity and can't back up the disk's data directly. Thankfully, LaCie has included an FTP server function, unlike Freecom, which means you'll be able to access your files remotely. Through the easy-to-navigate web management browser,

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you can create user accounts but not groups.

A nice touch is that data security is retained when the disk is connected via USB - you can't view any of the shares until you've logged on. Furthermore, the appliance will automatically power up when connected via USB and you turn on your computer, and power down when you shut down the computer.

Initial setup isn't particularly easy, though. No software is bundled to find the appliance on a network, and the quick-start guide doesn't include basic information such as the default IP address, username or password. We also found the web management pages slow to load compared to others.

Out of the box, the unit is formatted to FAT32, which allows it to support Windows, Mac and Linux clients. Unfortunately, it also hampers performance - over the network, we found read and write speeds to be the slowest here at around 3MB/sec. USB transfer rates were much better, writing and reading at 16MB/sec and 18MB/sec respectively.

A small fan at the rear means the LaCie is slightly noisier than some - you'll hear a hum over the backround noise in a quiet room, since it registered 31.8dBA from the front when idle. Fortunately, search noises weren't much louder, adding less than a decibel.

With an external PSU and a warranty that's nothing out of the ordinary, the LaCie's main attraction is value. Per gigabyte, it's the most affordable here at just 51p, so if you can live with the lack of NAS features and slow network transfer speeds, it's something of a bargain.