The Epicurean Cyclist

For the modern bicycle tourist, let’s call her Tourist 2.0, who is blogging, shooting video , stills and recording audio – storage capacity is always an issue. For short trips (S24Os or week long trips), memory cards may suffice. However, the longer Tourist 2.0 is out, the greater the storage demands.

Laura and I have been on the road for appoximately four months. We are active bloggers and are incorporating lots of still photography and video on our site. I’m shooting with a DSLR as well as a point and shoot and we are slowly filling up our external hard drive.

For the past four months, we’ve been using an iOmega terrabyte. It has been reliable and trust worthy as our guardian of our digital media. However, it is not without its shortcomings when used for bicycle touring. For one, it is heavy. With the case and the power cord included, the terrabyte comes out to about 3.5 pounds. Another problem, which I didn’t forsee when I was using it at home, was that it requires an external power source. If you’re at a coffee shop with multiple outlets then it’s a non-issue. However, if you want to download and edit some videos and stills from the days ride in your tent or at a picnic table, you’d be hard pressed to find an outlet handy.

Having ridden for four months and carrying the hard drive up and over some steep roads, my criteria for the ideal Tourist 2.0 hard drive would be the following 1) small to reduce pack volume 2) lightweight to reduce pack weight 3) high capacity 4) ability to be powered by a laptop 5) durable to last the journey.

In search for a good external hard drive, I first picked up a Western Digital Passport from Best Buy. Opening the box, it seemed to fit most of the criteria. It was feather weight when compared to my iOmega, it was small, it could store 500GB and it was ostensibly bus powered. When I got home to try it, however, it didn’t work. Period. I apparently got a dud since it was DOA. I even tried it on two laptops and a desktop. Nothing. It didn’t inspire confidence so I’ve sworn off Western Digital products.

I decided to get a LaCie drive since I have used them with much success for the last four years as a photographer. At first I considered their rugged drives with bright orange bumpers. They only had 350GB versions in stock at the Apple store and compared to drives with similar or greater capacity, they were NOT that small or lightweight. There were some Western Digital products at the store, but having been burned once already I didn’t even bother.

I ultimately settled on a LaCie external hard drive designed by Starck. To be perfectly honest, I could care less about who designed it and what it looked like just so long as it fit the criteria.

The LaCie Starck is smallish and lightweight-ish. Comprable in size to the Western Digital Passport, but seemingly twice the weight. The Starck has a heavy metal body, with the front looking like liquid Terminator oozing about. I’m not quite sure why the drive is so needlessly heavy. If they really wanted to impress, they should have made made the metal enclosure titanium so it was atleast lightweight!

I unwrapped the drive just outside the Apple store and first plugged it in to my MacBook using the included USB cord. Nothing. I began to have flashbacks of my Western Digital experience . I then tried the integrated USB cord and it was finally recognized by my computer. I had to run the software to format it for my Mac (what happened to the simple days of just plug and format with Disk Utility?).

This begs the question of why the included longer USB cable wouldn’t work? Is that interface a dud? Is the MacBook USB bus too underpowered to power it through the longer cable? If so, why not a note about that or some kind of troubleshooting in the documentation?

When we returned to Laura’s fathers house I transferred the essential files from our iOmega to the LaCie Stark – about 225GB worth of files. It took a little longer than an hour to do it. Not exactly blazing fast, but it completed the transfer without a hiccup. Today, I’m sending the iOmega home for safe keeping. I have my fingers crossed that the LaCie Starck will work flawlessly.

Would I recommend the LaCie Starck? Maybe. It fits some of the criteria. If I had more time and greater selection I probably would have purchased something else. But given the fact that we have to get moving, it seemed to be our best option. With the LaCie I was definitely able to reduce pack volume and some pack size. I also gained the ability to use the drive without being powered by an outlet. The integrated pigtail USB is a nice feature and eliminates the need for keeping track of more cords.

Pros:
-500GB capacity
-metal body
-ostensibly bus powered
-small form factor
-integrated USB pigtail
-was not DOA like the Western Digital Passport
-designed by Starck (if that matters to you)

Cons:
-heavy for size! Use titanium next time or some alloy that doesn’t feel like a brick of lead.
-included longer USB does NOT work with MacBook and offers no explanation why.
-designed by Starck (if you don’t care)
-costs more when compared to similar drives. I could do without the fancy designer labeling if that meant more function over form.