Last Updated
August 17, 2010

Editor's Rating

• Solid, slim body & design
• Low cost per gigabyte
• Good transfer speeds

• Short USB cable included

The LaCie Rikiki external hard drive is a low-cost, portable storage device that comes in three different capacities. It features a dent-resistant brushed-aluminum body, an attractive design, 640GB of storage space, and a two-year warranty.

The design of the LaCie Rikiki is very minimalistic, but that's a good thing. It has an brushed-aluminum dent-resistant body that provides basic protection from bumps and everyday mobility. The case has only a USB port and a status LED light and nothing else. It weighs a very light 150 grams and measures 4.3 x 2.9 x 0.5-inches (lwh) and is available in 250GB, 500GB, and 640GB capacities.

The Rikiki comes with a 6-inch long USB cable, which is rather short and most users will want to purchase a much longer cable for more convenience and usability. The drive is compatible with Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7, and also Mac OS too.

When you plug in the device for the first time, the LaCie Setup Assistant appears asking you which drive format to format the disk in. You can choose from NTFS/FAT32 (Windows) and HFS+ (Mac OS). There is also a copy of Genie Backup Assistant included with the Rikiki, but it's extremely basic and only supports 32-bit copies of Windows 2000-Vista and provides no Mac OS support.

Performance with the LaCie Rikiki was good, even with files that were more larger in size. Transferring several 100MB+ video files went quickly for both adding & removing from the device. Transferring files 1GB+ in size did seem slightly slower than normal, but nothing too painful.

We really liked the cost of this device, especially the 640GB for around $120 retail. This yields a cost of about $.19 per gigabyte for the 640GB model, which is slightly less in cost per gigabyte compared to other similar external drives.

Another plus to the LaCie Rikiki is the two-year warranty for both parts and labor that comes included with the device, as well as telephone support on weekdays.

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