The last time we saw this minimalist offering from LaCie the capacity of 500GB seemed reasonably impressive . Fast-forward a couple of months and this drive has doubled in size and is now offering a superb terabyte of storage space.

What hasn’t changed, though, is the design. This Neil Poulton-crafted hard disk is still a plain black rectangular box with an attractive blue light that illuminates when the device is turned on. It’s certainly not flashy but it looks fantastic on a desk, and the uniform shape means that it’s versatile.

Our tests showed that the LaCie is a decent performer, too. In our range of USB tests, it was consistently one of the quickest drives, reading and writing our single 50MB file in the joint-quickest time on test – 1.5 and 1.7 seconds respectively, along with the Maxtor.

The LaCie performed well in our other tests as well. When reading our larger 650MB file, the drive was as quick as anything else we’ve seen this month, taking 19.9 seconds to read the ISO-sized file.

Stylish and fast, the LaCie is the cheapest 1TB drive on test. At $219 and 22c per gigabyte, the drive offers the best value of all the desktop drives, proving a better buy than the $310 WD or $319 Maxtor, both of which offer the same capacity.

The low price does mean some features are missing, however. The only interface available is USB, and the ethereal blue glow isn’t the most obvious access light we’ve seen this month.

Nevertheless, this is a deeply impressive drive. It may not offer eSATA, but its USB performance was among the best we saw in this Labs. It’s a light, versatile drive with a keen sense of style and the cheapest way, at least this month, to get a terabyte of storage.