Although the LaCie mini, MicroNet's miniMate, and Newer Technologies’ miniStack are designed to match the look look of the Mac mini, you can use these external hard drives with any USB- or FireWire-equipped Mac. All three drives are well designed, but we found one of them stood out from the pack.

Design. All three drives are designed to cosmetically compliment the Mac mini, but each one has its own little aesthetic nuances, such as the way the Mac mini sits on top of the drive. The miniMate’s top closely resembles the Mac mini’s top-a single flat surface upon which the Mac mini rests. The miniStack’s top is formed so that the Mac mini’s bottom fits snugly on top of the drive; the drive is 1.5 inches tall. The LaCie mini (1.77 inches tall) uses raised corners to prop the Mac mini up, leaving a small gap between the Mac and the drive. We didn’t find one design more advantageous over the others, nor did we encounter any heat problems during our testing—which design you like depends on your own personal tastes.

The aesthetically nitpicky will want to know that of the three drives, the LaCie mini’s brushed metal most closely resembled the Mac mini’s. the miniStack’s metal is a slightly different tone, while the miniMate’s metal looks more polished than brushed. None of the drives use plastic that exactly matches the Mac mini’s white, but the plastic is used on areas of the drives that wouldn’t be on display anyway—the top and rear.

Hubs. The miniMate and miniStack have a major feature not found in the LaCie mini—both double as FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 Hubs. Both drives have three FireWire ports and four USB ports (you'll lose one FireWire or USB port when you connect either drive to your Mac); you can add more peripherals to your Mac without having to add more hubs.

LaCie's design not only doesn’t provide a hub, but you also don’t get both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 ports with the same drive—you purchase either a FireWire 400-only model or USB 2.0-only model. The FireWire model comes with two FireWire ports; one to connect the drive to the Mac and another to connect to another FireWire peripheral. The USB model, however, has only one USB port—considering that the Mac mini has only two USB ports, you’ll need to buy a separate USB hub for other peripherals. The lack of ports is reflected in the pricing; the LaCie mini drives are the lowest priced of this group.

Speed. Both the miniMate and the miniStack give you the option to connect to connect via FireWire or USB, but you'll benefit greatly from using FireWire instead of USB. We used Xbench (free, www.xbench.com) to gauge the speed of each drive, and found that on the 80GB miniMate, the FireWire speed was twice as fast as the USB speed in Xbench's Sequential Uncached Write test; in the Sequential Uncached Read test, the FireWire connection was 1.8 times faster than USB. When testing the 400GB miniStack, FireWire was almost three times faster than USB the Sequential Uncached Write test and 3.2 times faster in the Sequential Uncached Read test. When comparing the three drive’s speed over FireWire, the 400GB miniStack was 9 percent faster than the LaCie mini in the Sequential Uncached Read test, and the miniStack was 3 percent faster than the LaCie mini. When writing, the 80GB miniMate was marginally the slowest of the three—but these speed differences could very well be result of the drives’ different capacities (all three drives spin at 7,200 rpm). When we duplicated a 2GB file in the Finder, the differences were dramatic, as we expected. File Duplication via FireWire on the three drives took just over minutes. Duplication via USB on the miniMate and the miniStack took well over 6 minutes.
–Roman Loyola.