LaCie’s Outrageously Priced ‘Mirror’ Is A Reflective, Gorilla Glass-Clad External HDD

Since when is an external hard drive solution a decorative desk piece? Since now, apparently -- Seagate's premium owned LaCie division today unveiled the LaCie Mirror portable hard drive that comes completely encased in scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass. It also comes with an ebony wooden base, which might seem odd for an external drive, though this is one of those cases where it would be a shame to keep it out of sight.

The LaCie Mirror is a signature piece designed in collaboration with French designer Pauline Deltour. It's also functional -- inside the Mirror sits a 1TB hard drive for backup chores. Data transfers take place over USB 3.0, provided you have a USB 3.0 port on your PC. If not, it's of course backwards compatible with the much slower USB 2.0 spec.


Why the mirror finish? LaCie quotes Mark Pendergrast, author of Mirror Mirror, to explain the reasoning behind the reflective motif.

"Of all human inventions, the mirror is perhaps the most intriguing, since it is so closely connected to our own consciousness, reflecting both reality and illusion," Pendergrast said, author of Mirror Mirror: A History of the Human Love Affair with Reflection. "As our first technology for self-contemplation, the mirror is arguably as important an invention as the wheel and perhaps even more universal."

We don't know about all that self-contemplation business, though we could easily see something like this finding a home in a professional office environment, or even in a home office that's dressed for success rather than littered with spare PC parts all over the place.


Durability is a point of concern, though according to LaCie; the combination of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with chemically strengthened glass makes it atomically configured to better survive real-world events.

Naturally something like this doesn't come cheap -- the asking price is $280 MSRP. Fairly steep for a mechanical hard drive, though that breaks down to 28 cents per gigabyte, which is still better than most solid state drives.