Neil Poulton Puts Bumpers on LaCie Rugged Hard Drive

Designer Neil Poulton is often associated with LaCie as he's best known for the award-winning "Firewire Speakers." He went on to design a glossy black hard drive that features a blue LED strip with an ambient glow. If utilitarians were to design the drive instead of him, the underside glow would be replaced by a capacity meter found on SimpleTech, which would at least be moderately useful for some of us.

It would seem Neil has listened and gone back to putting practical feature to drive. Starting with the Rugged Hard Drive, the mobile USB storage looks more like an inflatable raft with all four sides encased in thick orange rubber bumpers that should help absorb the shock in a drop and that keeps the 500GB Hitachi 2.5" inside safe and sound. Each drive weighing at 8.8 oz. comes bundled with LaCie's in-house '1-Click' software for cross-platform backup. The Rugged Hard Drive backed by a 2-year warranty now retails for $339.99.