The fastest and hardest external hard drive
If you need a hardest and fastest mobile
storage, the LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt is an external hard drive for
you. SSD is made for the Mac, but it's powerful enough for the PC, especially
Thunderbolt is available on Windows system currently. Overall, the SSD is
slightly more expensive because the price is based on the number of gigabyte,
and LaCie drive is not an exception, but it compensates with speed and
flexibility enough to win for it the Editors' Choice for a hard mobile drive.
If you need a mobile storage and you have one Windows PC or Mac equipped with
Thunderbolt, this drive should be in your pocket.
LaCie
Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt
Design and features
Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt is similar in
size and design with LaCie Mini Ruged that we reviewed; both metal and plastic
shells are wrapped in an orange rubber mattress (bumper). Latest Rugged Mini
has rotating 500GB hard drive, while the Thunderbolt drive contains 120GB SSD.
This makes it equal to the ioSafe Rugged Portable SSD drive, which won Editors'
Choice.
Both
metal and plastic shells are wrapped in an orange rubber mattress.
LaCie reviewed that the drive can survive
after a fall from the height of 4 feet, but since this SSD has no moving parts,
we are sure that it can be dropped safely from higher. The drive also works
well even in a collision or high vibration environment such as behind an
off-road vehicle running on dirt, lumpy road. The drive comes with USB 3.0 and
Thunderbolt; with a length of about two feet, they are shorter than a 6-feet
cable that Apple sells, but they are more convenient for people who travel for
work or go to work by train.
The drive is ready for a Time Machine
backup after a quick session with a LaCie setting program. You can choose to
format the drive for Mac, PC, or both; the software keeps a copy of itself on
the hard disk so that you can split the drive again in the future. You are
prompted to install several optional utilities such as Intego Backup Assistant
(a basic time backup program), LaCie Private Public (256bit AES encryption
program), instruction document of the drive (in PDF file), and cloud Wuala
storage (you have 10GB free for a year, and you can upgrade to add more at any
time).
Performance
Rugged USB3.0 Thunderbolt is one of the
fastest single mechanism drive we've ever tested. It reached 4,344 points in
the PCMark 7 repository test, higher than 3,946 points of ioSafe Rugged
Portable SSD. (We checked the two drives by using USB 3.0). When we compare the
two, the our current Editors' Choice is for rotating hard drive, Seagate Backup
Plus reached 1,449 points in the same test.
Mac tests have strengthened the speed
advantage of LaCie. It only takes 17 seconds to complete our test of drag and
drop 1.2GB when using Thunderbolt and 20 seconds via USB3.0. Let's compare this
with a 1TB Western Digital My Passport Studio, which took 19 seconds when using
FireWire 800 and 40 seconds with USB 2.0. (My Passport Studio that we examined
does not support USB 3.0).
The LaCie drive really shines with the
flux. It reaches 432MBps reading speed and 192MBps writing speed via USB 3.0 in
the AJA system test, which evaluates the drive performance in video operations.
LaCie reaches similar scores when using Thunderbolt (379MBps reading and
200Mbps writing), proving that the SSD is the speed monster.
Nearly smallest rival of LaCie Rugged is
Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt Portable HDD (HD-PA1.0TU3), which uses the 1TB
hard drive and thus rather slow to read (110MBps reading and 96MBps writing).
So, which portable drive is best for you?
LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt is fast and mobile drive that is much cheaper
than Thunderbolt drive we've ever seen before. Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt
beats the LaCie Rugged about the cost, it reaches 24 cents per gigabyte
compared to $1.67 per gigabyte of LaCie, but Buffalo MiniStation Thunderbolt is
not as fast as LaCie. Closest rival in terms of capability, capacity, and price
is the former Editors' Choice of rugged portable hard drives, ioSage Rugged
Portable SSD. IoSafe is definitely still the choice for users who need to use
the drive in an extreme environment, such as traveling or hunting or expedition
to the Yukon. For those who go to work by train, those who do not gentle with
their equipment, LaCie is faster, cheaper and more worthy for our Editors'
Choice for rugged portable hard drive.
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Info
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Price: $299.99
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Ratings: 4.5/5
Advantages
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Incredibly fast
·
Equipped with a Thunderbolt interface, USB 3.0
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All necessary cables are included.
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Extremely resilient against single drop and
vibration
Disadvantages
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Expensive
·
The price is based on each gigabyte per
dollar.
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