LaCie gets the key USB drives. It made them into keys. No bulk on your key ring and no hassles plugging it into crowded USB ports. Now LaCie has introduced some new keys, CooKey and WhizKey, with some great features, namely Wuala online storage and fast transfer speeds of up to 30MB/s with USB 2.0 or higher. Add waterproof and a sturdy metal design and you have some pretty sweet keys, er, USB memory sticks.
Availability
The LaCie CooKey and WhizKey will be available in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities through the LaCie Online Store, LaCie Reseller+, and LaCie Corner, starting at the suggested retail price of $19.99 (excluding VAT). For more information, visit www.lacie.com.
Encased in brushed, sturdy aluminum, the LaCie Rikiki, which means “tiny” in French, represents a resilient aesthetic that protects your media from everyday blunders and unwelcome fingerprints. Its lightweight design makes it a perfect companion for keeping your digital world close at hand.
“We are part of a generation that wants more from our electronics, but in the smallest form factor possible, and with a competitive price,” said Anne-Sophie Marchand, Consumer Product Manager. “With the LaCie Rikiki, we have done just that by fitting high-performance and high-capacity in the palm of your hand, for under $100.”
Leveraging the versatile USB 2.0 interface, the LaCie Rikiki is instantly compatible with your PC or Mac. Simply plug it in and you’re ready to store and share your favorite media with high-speed performance. LaCie Rikiki also offers USB Boost software for enhancing speeds up to 33% (Windows® only).
LaCie Rikiki also comes with a simplified software suite – for quick setup and easy-to-use backup management – enabling complete configuration in just a few clicks. The LaCie Rikiki is an all-in-one solution for storage mobility.
Availability
The LaCie Rikiki will be available in 250GB, 500GB, and 640GB capacities through the LaCie Online Store, LaCie Reseller+, and LaCie Corner, starting at the suggested retail price of $74.99 (excluding VAT). For more information, visit www.lacie.com.
Today LaCie announced the general availability of the LaCie 12big Rack product range – an enterprise class 2U rack-mounted portfolio, targeted at corporate IT users and video professionals. The LaCie 12big Rack Fibre, LaCie 12big Rack Serial, and LaCie 12big Rack Network, provide (respectively) SAN, DAS and NAS storage solutions that are designed to target the most demanding uses through their performance, customization, minimized downtime and ease-of-use. The range features multipathed 4x 4Gb/s fiber channel connections, dual mini-SAS connection (SFF-8088) or dual 1Gb/s Ethernet connection – making the 12big Rack portfolio a comprehensive storage range.
“I’m very pleased to introduce the 2U rack product range, a natural evolution to LaCie’s 20 years of experience with professional storage solutions. The new portfolio is complementary to LaCie’s existing high end storage, and allows LaCie to support a wider range of professional applications from Corporate IT to content creation and post-production companies,” said Minh Le, LaCie’s Marketing Director. “The LaCie 12big Rack product range provides the highest performance, data security levels, and minimized downtime, with no tradeoffs. We’re now offering our customers a comprehensive, customizable and expandable enterprise solution – starting with 6TB and scaling up to 60TB per storage system.”
Built with Enterprise Class SATA disks, the LaCie 12big Rack product range will ensure data is always available through the redundancy of power supplies, cooling units and a dual-controller option for the LaCie 12big Rack Fibre and the LaCie 12big Rack Serial. The range also offers multiple RAID levels for data protection, from RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and 50, up to RAID 6 – the 12big Rack storage systems will keep the most critical data safe against two-disk failure. Additionally, the LaCie 12big Rack Fibre’s Advanced Power Management feature and disk verify feature help ensure archived data is duly available upon the customer’s request.
While data security and integrity – even over a long period – is ensured, together with significant power saving features, the 12big Rack portfolio doesn’t compromise on performance. The LaCie 12big Rack Fibre supports a dual Active/Active controllers option and allows up to six streams of 422 uncompressed HD video. As such, the LaCie 12big Rack Fibre enables video-intensive users to edit uncompressed video streams on storage networks; the LaCie 12big Rack Serial is able to achieve similar performance as direct attached storage. Alternatively, the LaCie 12big Rack Network supports link teaming (IEEE 802.3ad) of its dual gigabit connections, allowing users to host critical backups, file sharing or archiving.
Every storage enclosure is expandable through miniSAS (SFF-8088) connections, and can support up to four daisy-chained 2U expansion enclosures depending on the 12big Rack product. Available with an impressive list of compatibilities, in terms of fibre channels switches, fiber channel HBAs, and RAID controllers, the LaCie 12big Rack portfolio has been designed to offer a diverse feature-set and comes with the LaCie Advance Care Option to provide customers with extra peace of mind.
For more information regarding specific features and capabilities, please visit http://www.lacie.com.
Today, LaCie announced a merger with Caleido AG, the creators of the innovative online storage service, Wuala.
Luzius Meisser, Co-Founder of Caleido said, “Wuala is an exciting technology that builds its reliable and secure cloud storage by harnessing idle resources.”
Wuala assembles centralized and distributed storage; the result is a reliable and scalable service. Once files are placed in Wuala, they are securely encrypted before being cut into several redundant fragments disseminated and stored on a cloud of computers.
“Users will gain online storage while trading disk space; that way, they will securely protect their valuable data. They can access it from anywhere and easily share files with selected peers. As privacy tends to be a major issue when talking about digital life and data management, everything is encrypted and a robust rights management system protects files from unauthorized access,” said Dominik Grolimund, Co-creator of Wuala, “We will also bring this technology to enterprises and professional customers, who will soon take advantage of our services with both cloud and data center-based storage.”
LaCie has plans to implement this first real “cloud storage” technology into its ranges of storage devices, offering a powerful and combined solution for storage–local storage on devices for fast access, and secured remote storage on the cloud, for easy sharing and complete data versatility.
“For 20 years, LaCie massively promoted hard drive technologies; today, as a leader on storage market, we will be a first mover in the next leading technologies: flash-based storage, and cloud storage. With this merger, LaCie will morph from a pure hardware manufacturer to a solution provider. These new technologies will be amazing for our customers and will enhance their experience,” Philippe Spruch concluded.
My biggest complaint for USB “thumb” drives is the difficulty getting them on my key ring. Some just don’t give you any good way to get them on the ring where others eventually fall off. The former is useless and the later is scary for security reasons. So why has taken so long for any one to get a clue on this? Thankfully, LaCie gets it and has just announced the “Keys” for what it calls “Handy portable storage”.
The passKey, iamaKey, and the itsaKey all look like common keys. With a nice little eyelet on a key “head”, sliding it on a ring should be a piece of cake. The ultra-mobile and lightweight USB thumb drives are hot-pluggable and is cross-platform compatible with full support for USB 2.0 providing fast transfer rates. The slick “keys” are designed by 5.5 Designers putting up to 8 GB of storage in the itsaKey and imaKey. PassKey has a built-in micoSD card reader allowing for more possibilities for your traveling storage needs. With transfer rates up to 30 MB/s, these could be the keys to your portable storage needs. Starting at $9.99, LaCie gets a huge round of applause from SvenOnTech for these practical beauties!