lacie 5big network drive looks like hal 9000’s brother

Designer Neil Poulton got the inspiration for the domed glowing light on the outside of his latest hard drive design from the red light on the face of HAL 9000, the infamous computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The new LaCie 5big Network storage array is designed for small and medium workgroups looking for a ton of storage at a reasonable price. Heck, I bet it has WAY more memory than HAL 9000 had. The 5big sports five hot-swappable Serial ATA drive bays which can accomodate as much as 7.5 terabytes of disk.

The drives can be configured in a number of array modes, including RAID 5, RAID 5+Spare, RAID 6, RAID 10 and RAID 0. The 5big can be attached to your network via a zippy Gigabit Ethernet port, and additional external drives can be connected via USB 2.0 or SATA ports.

The array also offers built-in Active Directory support, so you can easily add it as a Windows file server for your office. And if you’re not a Windows fan It’ll work with Mac and Linux systems too.

The 5big comes in three sizes: 2.5TB ($899), 5.0TB ($1399), and 7.5TB ($1899), and can be found over on the LaCie website.

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categories: computing design