LaCie Rugged Mini, 1TB, 2.5″, Portable External Hard Drive
LaCie Rugged Mini, 1TB, 2.5″, Portable External Hard Drive, for PC and Mac, Shock, Drop and Pressure Resistant, 2 year Rescue Services (LAC301558)
What’s Included
LaCie Rugged Mini hard drive, quick install guide
| Weight: | 163 g |
| Dimensions: | 13.51 x 8.64 x 2.59 cm; 163.29 Grams |
| Brand: | LaCie |
| Model: | LAC301558 |
| Colour: | Orange |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | LaCie |
| Dimensions: | 13.51 x 8.64 x 2.59 cm; 163.29 Grams |
Recently bought as a second backup drive for use with my 2022 MacBook Air, currently running OS Monterey 12.6. Bought in the sale for 72.99.
The orange silicone (or whatever it is) sleeve makes the drive easy to spot and protects from bumps. The metal chassis seems solid enough. Mine came with a black USB-C cable.
I used Disk Utility to erase the drive and chose format Mac OS Extended (Journalled) because an encrypted option wasn’t available for some reason.
The drive was recognised in Time Machine and I chose to encrypt and protect with a password as I do with all external hard drives, just in case it should go astray.
First backup took about an hour for 300GB without a hitch. From experience, subsequent backups should take much less.
Now I have two external hard drives recognised in Time Machine and alternate backups so I’m covered in case one fails. I’ve always preferred to spend money on getting two drives to protect against data loss.
So far, so good with this LaCie drive but will update re. durability.
I cannot write a review on the product (read on and you will see why), but I believe people need to know some important information.
This product and it’s minimal instructions states it is for PC and Mac – just plug in and start. WRONG.
For Mac you need to reformat.
I am a computer user and not a computer expert. Because I did not reformat (I did not know at the time) I carried on, and eventually after a few hours the drive stopped working and nothing could be done to save it. So I returned it and got my money back. Result – one lost sale of this product.
In this instance the drive was probably perfectly fine.
Photographer friendly! 🥰
Works great but the only issue is the overheating sometimes. But the rubber skin I believe helps with this. Comes with 2 wires. (USB-C to USB-C + USB to USB-C) Excellent if you’re working with Apple laptops from 2019.
Great HDD
I have a couple of these, they appear to be reliable, an essential for a hard drive. One is for recording and time shift on my TV, the other is used for back up of photos. Small units but capacity is good and portability excellent.
Hard drive
It’s a rugged hard drive, and 2tb. If you don’t need it to be rugged, save your money and buy a standard drive. If you need a rugged drive, here you go. If you really want to bounce it round, get an SSD.
As for rating the capacity, well, quite simply put it’s a 2tb drive. If you need more than 2tb, it isn’t the drive for you.
Good value, well buil
Only had drive for a few weeks but it works very reliably. It is well built with a bright orange rubber case which protects the drive. The drive has a usb-c port and comes with a good quality usb-c to usb-c cable and a usb-c to usb cable; very useful. I recommend this drive.
Great external hard drive
Purchased to back up work. Easy to use. It is occasionally temperamental – not ejecting saying it’s in use when it isn’t – but apart from that have found it really useful and stores my work well. Would buy another if needed
Always reliable
As professional photographer I need a reliable disk to backup my pictures on the road. the usb-c and rugged case made I perfect for the job. it comes already Fat 32 formatted so I just plug in and start copying.
Compact and great capacity
I purchased this 4TB drive to replace an earlier version 2TB hard drive that was not large enough capacity. Very happy with it. It came with a cable to connect the hard drive to a USB 3 port on a computer, I would have been much happier with a cable too connect the LaCie to a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) port on my iMac.
Love it!!! The aesthetics and the versatility. Perfecto for what I needed.
I like that it is small like a phone. I like that is big in capacity. I like that I can put all my designs there. I like that I had a question about how it works and I’ve got an answer in less than one hour. Ace!!!
The best product!
The best product. Of course it won’t last a lifetime and eventually these devices can fail after a long period of time (I’d say 2 years for my previous Rugged Mini), just treat it with care. Be sure to also backup your work to a cloud based service in addition to saving your work on hard drives. Above all, rugged and sturdy! Thank you!
Fast and quie
his is my second drive like this. my first is thunderbolt 1TB and this one 4TB usb3 for use with time machine on my Mac. EASY to set up but I haven’t use the mirror drive software yet (hence 4 stars)
Its now under my desk with a usb3 extension lead. I can just forget about it now. works for me!!
Pretty happy
I was hesitant to buy this product based on the reviews, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised that all the issues others have mentioned I have no problem with!
The connection is secure, not too tight or too loose. The casing doesn’t get in the way of the cable connection.
Storage wise it does the job.
I got it to replace an antiquated hard drive that wouldn’t work with FCPX. And this works fantastically. Definitely worth the 5 stars and cheaper than getting it through Apple.
I may be tempting Providence here, but in many decades of using personal computers, LaCie drives are the only ones that have never given me problems. Which is why I use them. My only (and very trivial) criticism is that if you stack these ‘rugged’ drives, the lower ones can get hot. I suggested LaCie consider offering a rack for them when used on the desk, and they took it on board.
LaCie External Hard Drive is very nice
LaCie External Hard Drive is very good for protection (about falling and agains water), but careful about LaCie’s USB C type cable had problems because I tried to pull out, and also push it very hard. USB-C to USB-C cable is not very good because it is very hard to pull out or push. I decided to buy USB-C to USB 3.0 adapter.
My one LaCie hard drive had failed. I had no idea why. But I got a replacement from amazon. I feel very positive for them. I thank them for help me.
Bought it for video editing and it's grea
Had my own share of faulty hard drives that brought me much pain, this one works great and I can edit videos on it without any issues. Hopefully my nightmare with external hard drives ends here!
One of my favourite desk and bought it on sale!
To me it’s the best hard drive especially when there’s a big discount. Also, the other type with the lead combined with the silicone case that’s great too. Recommend purchase.
Big little beast of tech
This was recognised without any issues in my old Linux laptop.
The disk looks very sturdy and modern, but the important thing is that I can back up all my data in a single place for safekeeping.
Failed Drive
Be aware, this drive failed after a year with very little use !!
Was used to store picture shoots over the course of the year, the cost to recover the files was 450+
SO BE AWARE…!!!
Small, neat and efficie
I’m very pleased with this new LaCie to replace an older and larger one. This new model is small and neat and works well with my Mac for backing up on Time Machine.
Excellent device, still running well
Bought Aug 2019, 1 year on, still running well. It is not noisy and time machine backups are completed quickly without any problems. Connected to my iMac running macOS High Sierra version 10.13.6
Best for media/film productions
I work in media & film industry and we all use onoy Lacie rugged hard drives. They are sooo good and proper made, fast and durable. Extended warranty is a BIG PLUS.
Great price and usability on Macs out of the box.
Great price for 5TB.
LACIE just work out of box with Mac no formatting needed. Got a lot of these over the years. Great product. No need for external power source.
Plug and Play, would buy agai
Unpacked it, plugged it into my 2015 MacBook Pro, time machine popped up by itself, complete backup was calculated to take about 10 hours, but it took only around 78 minutes. Great product, easy to use, fast delivery.
Relatively cheap but sturdy external hard drive. Does its job.
I was looking for a relatively cheap but sturdy external hard drive. So far so good. The one it replaced did not last very long even though it didn’t get knocked about too much when being carried about or being stored in drawers. Not the fastest but doesn’t need to be for my needs.
Nice thing
Been using it for 1month. Totally safe with all of my music work stored on it. Nice shape, does not produce much sound, does not get hot too much, easy to use and register. The app that comes with it is annoying though. Also I needed to reformat it with the included app to use with my Mac but that is not big of a task.
A compact and colourful external HD
It sits attached to my iMac by USB, backing up continuously. in two parts: all my various files in one and all my 7,000 photos in the other one. I have not yet taken it out to plug it into my lMacBook Air and look at how the backed up files are organised, and attempt to amend them. This is a hurdle too many to jump as I am not very technical!
Update: Lacie have called me in response to my last email I sent them apologising as they have stated they did not receive the details I sent them. I re sent them whilst on the call and they confirmed the mail made it to them, this was very positive and I will update the review on the conclusion.
I already had some of these drive in a different capacity & was pleased with them. Unfortunately when I went to try to claim the free creative cloud offer on this purchase the Lacie app just kept sending me to a URL where the page did not exist stating 404.
Customer support has been poor telling me to use the app, I explained the app don’t work and they closed the ticket.
This concerns me as if I had a fault with the HDD I know Lacie would not be a reliable source of support however as I purchased these in the UK Amazon provide the warranty under law so I am going to keep them as I know I don’t need Lacie’s help if things go wrong.
On the go backup
Took a while to finally make the decision to buy this. So far I am really pleased with its performance. Battery life is good. Adding the DS card for backup is simple and reliable to date. Connecting to iPad Pro, after a bit of firmware updating, reliable too. All in all its absolutely doing a great job. Hopefully this continues over time, but so far so good.
As someone that creates videos for lots of different businesses, I needed a quality hard drive that was reliable enough I didn’t have to worry about the safety of my files. I currently use the 2019 MacBook Pro and therefore was happy to see a hard drive option that was USB C and not standard USB.
Like I mentioned the main feature for me was the fact it had a USB C connection, which this does.
As well as that, I knew I would be traveling around with the hard drive, so seeing it is drop crush and rain resistant is an added benefit. Fortunately, I am yet to have to test out these claims.
Although the orange rubber is quite useful in that it stops the hard drive getting scratched or slipping.
In terms of size, both physically and storage-wise, I would say it is pretty standard and similar to most other products.
Another added benefit that I was pleased with was that it came with a month of Creative Cloud, giving me the opportunity to test out Photoshop and Lightroom.
Overall, I have been quite happy with the hard drive so far and had no issues. It has done what it says and stores my files well. It’s not the fastest of hard drives but it is a HDD and not an SSD, so can’t expect too much. The features I have mentioned make this a great purchase. It is a product that I would recommend.
Easy to use, reliable so fa
This is probably my 12th LaCie drive, and I’ve found them to be fairly reliable. If you register the product with LaCie (or Seagate now, since they have merged) and the drive fails while it’s still in warranty, they replace it quickly and without fuss.
If drives last beyond the warranty period, I’ve found they go on for a very long time.
I note some tales of woe from people who have lost files among the reviews for this product on Amazon. I feel your pain, but that all devices can fail. Expect them to fail and have a thorough backup strategy that gives you three copies of all your files. Then, if a drive fails it doesn’t matter if you can get a replacement. It’s annoying if a drive fails, but we can’t blame LaCie or anyone else for lost files.
Excellent produc
Just what I wanted. Had no issues so far. my last portable hard drive Slipped off the laptop whilst downloading images and lost all my data already stored on it. This I’m sure will not break quite as easily as it feels more rugged. With the bright orange rim I certainly won’t loose it!
Excellent produc
Amazing purchase, would highly recommend. I have had it on for constanstly for over a month and it doesn’t over heat or crash. Very handy physical size too, considering it’s 5TB
I love it’s rugged look, this is my fifth one now, and I’ve used them for years and never had one fail, mind you I do keep two copies of everything on two separate drives. All hard drives will fail at some point
I can really recommend these drives, they are well built and if you don’t throw it around they should last for years
Amazing produc
Great product, exactly what I was looking for, managed to clear all my files on to it and still plenty of space left, very easy to use, came with two wires so I could plug my phone directly in to it aswell as connect via usb to MacBook, absolutely no faults so far.
brilliant drive
Very robust, good to use and carry around if you are travelling for work. I wish I had used these products from the start, rather than competitors’ hard drives. I would recommend this product to those who need external storage, and don’t want to lose their data due to dropped or damaged drives.
Quality produc
Easy to use. Perfect to fit in my bag, my pocket and very durable. Travel accessory for on the go work e.g. photography and it very fast to transfer files.
Grreat Produc
The Hard drive arrived on the specified day and was certainly at the quality you would expect from Lacie. It is very robust and compact which allows me to take it with me wherever I go.
Great little back up drive
Size and portability are amazing with the HD, since using it the USBC cable has started to degrade and I have had house shrink wrap to protect further cable exposure
Storage on the Go
I purchased this as my Mac was upgraded with a 2Tb drive, so I need double that when it comes to backups. I selected this model as my Mac only had USB3 ports. It’s a very fast drive and no additional PSU is required.
Highly Recommend. Great product for great value.
So simple to use. Compatible with Mac and Windows. Sturdy and comes with USB 3.0 and USB-C. Very fast write and read speed. Easy to connect and quick to register on machine. Great product for a great price. Highly Recommend.
Rugged, Durable & Long Lasting
I’ve bought two of these now. One I use as a back up for my Mac. The other I use to back up my university work. They are exactly as it says rugged and tough. Long lasting and durable. I’ve had my other one for five years and it still works. I bought another recently. As they are so good. I recommend them to everyone. I was recommended to buy one of these whilst in my first year of university. Excellent quality, excellent value for money. Excellent seller and speedy delivery. Five stars.
LaCie all day everyday
Really easy to use, simple set up. It’s really robust too. this is my second Lacie and I honestly wouldn’t buy anything else at this price point. I’ve had too many bad experiences with WD and other Drives and this works so much better.
Trus
Having the Thunderbolt and USB ‘C’ makes it very versatile. I already have a 1TB version that I use as a DJ, this 2 TB will be my backup for all of my music files and replace my very slow chunky HD that needs external power adapter.
Works Excellently well.
There’s nothing glamorous about an external hard drive, so far so good, sturdy and strong, does its purpose. It reaches good transfer speed’s better than what it says on the box.
Its a great buy.
Would recommend, good quality and light weight to carry round.
Very good portable hard drive. A lot better than what I had previous. Easy to put away into case and take to work when needed. Good quality and light weight. Would recommend.
Best spinning disk hard drive money can buy.
Been using this for over a year now, use it as a backup drive for my files and work documents. Decent data speeds over TB3 with my MacBook Pro and a good capacity. Colour stands out and is striking.
Best Drive I've owned
Was recommended this make by colleagues I work with who use LaCie all the time.
Really impressed with it. The protective orange cover has come in handy already (butter fingers!) and the transfer speeds are impressive.
Never had any issues.
Always used LaCie hard drives and they have never failed to impress with speed, performance and reliability. The cable is a little flimsy which is irritating sometimes but overall well worth the money. This is my second hard drive from Amazon.
Fast, sturdy and secure
Great hard drive, it’s fast, the USB C connection is much better than the normal USB or the Thunderbolt as those come out quite easy, this one is very secure so the drive doesn’t eject all the time
Brilliant, robust and compac
This product is brilliant, I would recommend using the app/software in addition so that it transfers all data from the computer to the storage device without having to do it manually. The design of it means I don’t need to be too fearful of damaging it, which is important for myself as a student who needs to ensure all my work is safely backed up. It is much better value for money to buy the one with more storage but due to money availability I didn’t. However, I am still nowhere near to using all the storage space so for me the larger storage capacity is not necessary.
I would note that it is important not to lose the cables which connect it to the laptop/computer, which could cause inconvenience but is not the end of the world and can be replaced.
Great drive overall but ridiculously weak connective cable
Overall it’s a great drive to have especially if you’re traveling/moving a lot. However one of the things that most annoy me about this drive is how flimsy the connective cable is. I’ve found myself way too often in situations where i’ll even slightly touch the cable and it will disconnect, sometimes causing programmes such as Adobe Lr and FCPx to ‘crash’, with 3 instances of corrupted libraries in the latter case. Really a shame.
Very sturdy hard drive
I was happy with the one before from the same brand, just the 1To bought about 5 years ago. I am once more content with my new external hard drive to carry along on my travels and holding my pictures and entertainment. Bounce every time on the carpet without me stressing out overly.
Great rugged as you like portable drive
This is an excellent little drive and ships with USB C and micro USB. I needed it to move data off a couple of MAC’s due to their disks being full. Super fast and love the colour orange!
Large Disk that supports Thunderbolt 1.2 and 3 connectivity
I purchased this disk as I needed to move 1.4Tb of data from a 2011 iMac to my new iMac for 2019. After trying to use Migration Assistant (even with a Thunderbolt cable) it failed to move all the data and was frustratingly slow. I was able to move my photo and music collection in hours rather than days. I am not keen on the design, the orange bumper is to garish for me, however, the claim is that it does protect the disk and also that it provides a degree of weather proofing. I was impressed with the cables – built in Thunderbolt 1 & 2, with a connection for Thunderbolt 3/USBc and a spare leat for USB 3 as well as the thunderbolt 3 cable.
I marked it down for portability as it is quite bulky and heavy. For me, if you are doing lots of photography with big images or movie files on the go – you need an SSD so that you can edit on the go, This disk is too slow for that purpose. It is overall though a great storage device and comes with software to make it Time machine compatible.
Best hard drive eve
This drive is the best quality you could find and I was able to find it here at a very competitive price. It comes with two cables so it fits both usb and usbc ports. Great purchase, wouldn’t change it for any other hard drive.
Includes firewire 800 lead
I just used Mac OS disc utility to format this in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and got rid of all the stuff that came with it.
It came with a firewire 800 lead. I didn’t know this in advance and ordered an unnecessary lead as well. It also has a USB lead. I particularly wanted firewire 800, although my machine has thunderbolt, as FW800 can be daisy chained with no hub needed. I have moved 500 Gbytes of photos off my internal drive and given my old 2014 Mac Mini a new lease of life.
Always found LaCie products reliable. This seems no different.
Sold Hard Drive. Good Speeds. Nice design.
Hi have had about 3 of these over the years. They have yet to let me down. The oldest has a broken lead for the thunderbolt, which was obviously a design fault as they have removed the chord and is now a simple USB-C port which makes for a good speed. Not tested but I edit 4K on it with no problem.
Good size. Not as blisteringly fast as the GDrive externals. But it is not an SSD so not a fair comparison. Good for travel.
Have always worked perfectly for me
I thought I’d leave a review as I’ve been using these for years without an issue so despite others saying theirs have failed, there are clearly reliable ones around! Mine get carried around all over the place and I’ve never had an issue. I’ve just bought my eighth. One year I did buy a different brand as I was put off by the reviews on here saying avoid. It was the one most of the bad reviews suggest buying instead. That one failed only a couple of months after buying and I bought another one of these to replace it which worked fine!
No issues - works a charm.
I partitioned the HDD for Mac & Windows use – works a treat. Software worked easily upon first time use.
Had a small stutter once and had to forcible disconnect and reconnect while uploading files but issue never reoccurred so most likely just a ‘by-chance’ happening.
Rugged nature keeps HDD itself and contents safe. Also handy feature is that it’s non-slip due to rubber rim. Handy.
I love love love this item!!
One of the top items on my list!! I use it everyday and take it with me everywhere. I work a lot on my computer with a lot of different files and therefore this is very convenient. Love love love it! 😀 woohooo
Great product, but you need to pay premium.
My fav mobile drive, great design, great speeds and very safe! Next great benefit is having great connections: usb c, tunderbolt, usb 3 – everything what you will need and more. Only problem is the price, but if you will get it on the deal, there is no better product.
Does not quite muster the consistent speed necessary for editing HD video, but for archival use it’s fantastic. I was never able to attain more than 100 MB/s, the advertised max is 130 MB/s.
My go-to hard drive!
I’m a graphic designer and photographer and work with large files daily. This is an absolute work horse. I never have issues with it and it comes with all the cables you need. It’s fast and makes no noise at all. I take this with me where ever I go and it’s never let me down.
I got this to replace a WD MyPassport wireless pro which never worked properly from day one, and was hopelessly unreliable.
I used this for storing video from my action cameras on a recent motorcycle tour. Just pop the sd cards into the slot, click the button, and all the video is copied to the drive. You can then reformat the card for the next couple of hours in the saddle. A major plus is being able to hook the CoPilot up to an iPad to view the videos or photos on it – no more carting a laptop on trips.
With storage devices becoming so easy to lose now e.g. micro sd cards, it is really reassuring to know everything is backed up on this device.
As an added bonus you can even use it a a power bank if your phone or tablet die (don’t rely on it for a full charge though).
Fits thunderbolt 2 port on iMac 2015
Enabled use of thunderbolt 2 port for backup purposes on my iMac.
freeing up a usb port. so far so good no problems.
easy to set up and use. good price.
delivered promptly as promised.
Great price, but wish thunderbolt could be removed
Very good construction, speeds are adequate on thunderbolt, but not tested usb c. It’s not super fast but it’s good enough as a backup drive.
Price is great for 4tb storage that is strong and durable like this.
My only gripe is that the thunderbolt cable is fixed to the drive with no way of removing it. Would have preferred a hot swappable option of all ports so I Cana remove the thunderbolt cable if I was using usb c for example. Otherwise this would easily get 5 stars
Great external hard drive
There are faster external hard drives, but there aren’t tougher hard drives. I use these for system back ups. Their robust bumper mean that they survive regular shipping through the Royal Mail system in a jiffy bag. I can’t recommend it highly enough
Thunderbolt + usb 3 and usb 2
Strong and portable. I use this with a macbook pro. It’s ideal for apple computers because it has thunderbolt connection which makes transfer speeds a lot quicker than using USB. It Will also work on a pc using USB 3 or USB 2. Very happy with mine
Rugged, reliable, fast - great peace of mind.
Excellent high capacity and rugged hard drive. I use three of these at work to provide off-site storage of our server. We also use them on location when they do get knocked about but always survive. These drives are fast and behave well. As the price of storage falls and capacity increases, these get better and better value. Consider what would happen if you had no back up, and these pay for themselves on the first use. I always like LaCie kit and have luckily never had one fail on me yet.
great for throwing in your bag
Have used these for years, we always used these internally at the genius bar. Handle drops well, great for throwing in your bag. connection type is solid. Great drive overall!
Amazing product!
Excellent product. It’s already the second I got from LaCie. Great advantage of having rubber protection to avoid ruining yourself in possible falls and for excellent for those who walk with the discs from side to side.
Excellent.
Brilliant and reliable. You get what you pay for, and this sort of thing needs to be reliable. My friend has had one for many years, so I know it’s trustworthy.
You would be hard pressed to find a better drive. MP
The ruggedised exterior is the reason I purchase the LaCie drives. Dependable and droppable especially out in the field where backing up data on my camera is so crucial. You would be hard pressed to find a better drive. MP
Great, reliable hard drives.
Can’t go wrong with a LaCie drive. I own a bunch of these, very reliable, hard wearing and solid drives. No problems at all. They even have a very easy to use setup wizard for partitioning them and formatting it when you first plug it in if you’re not the techy type. Good stuff.
Saved from a crisis so I can't complain!
Seems to work well enough though setup instructions minimal so I’m not sure if I made the right choices in some parts. And I wish there were a better way for it to tell me it’s operating — one has to feel it vibrating. I just hope it lasts longer than my previous one which was a Seagate.
Excellent for Mac Backup
This was a replacement for a similar, smaller capacity and much older LaCie Rugged. The Firewire cable fitted my Mac Mini and it took less than five minutes to get the OSX Time Machine saving my data once again. The initial backup took about two hours, but after that the hourly backups take a few minutes. Amazon got this to me well within their stated time period for Standard delivery.
These drives are the best. I have several, or 1, 2 and 4 TB and now got one for my wife. We travel a lot and our stuff needs to be rugged. This one is! Soft rubber all around means good shock absorbtion.
Quiet operation, barely a whisper when turning.
Very fast thunderbolt connection for our Macbook computers, though you can also use USB-3 connection with included cable. It is pretty much weather proof with orange rubber coat, but I would not push my luck as in under the rain…
They are not the cheapest but hard drives with my travel photos is not where I want to pinch pennies.
The supplier were great though, no quibble
This is the 2nd LaCie Rugged HD I have bought as the other one worked so well. Touch wood!! Unfortunately this purchase had to be sent back for repair within the first month. The supplier were great though, no quibble. Returned it and send it back fixed fairly quickly. Ideally it would have been nice if they had offered a brand new replacement though.
Good speedy backup on a Mac.
Not quite as fast as I had hoped using the Thunderbolt port on a Mac but certainly much faster than using a USB port. Very solid and robust. Certainly good for backups but I had hoped I could run Parallels software emulator on this as drive on Mac getting short of space. Looks like you would need to pay the extra for SSD version or upgrade internal drive for this but as a backup disc or to save files on it is worth the extra money.
such a good harddrive - Big shame the cable isn't as good ...
such a good harddrive – Big shame the cable isn’t as good on this newer model. I always get Lacie Rugged’s but this smaller one means that it disconnects on the slightest movement – which makes me concerned it could corrupt my hard drive.
Great HDD but rubbish included set-up assistant software.
I like the Rugged Mini HDD but hate the included software set-up assistant enabling (or not) the user to format the drive either FAT32 or NTFS. If you want 4TB of storage then don’t use the set-up assistant and you’ll need to be familiar with disc management in Windows!
Small, attractive and has been doing it’s job as a ‘Time Machine’ backup on my iMac for some 7 weeks now without any problem (I really hope I haven’t just jinxed things!!!!). It’s set to back up every hour using USB which it does silently and unobtrusively. What’s not to like? I’ll update re longevity in 6 months or so.
It works. And I’m not scared that I’ll break when moving it around. Doesn’t need an extra case, the rubbery enclosure is great. My bf has had 2 of those in the last few years (previous versions) and they still work.
The best external hard drives in my opinion. I use these for all my back up storage and my back up, back ups. I own around a dozen of these and they have never failed or corrupted. I don’t baby my equipment and apart from keeping them in a zipped dust proof case, they get thrown around. I use a 4TB as a day drive with a 2015 MBP and this drive pretty much lives in my rucksack.
Pretty good customer service
This 4tb drive died 6 months after it started “ticking”, which spells the end of the drive. The return process is complicated by the fact that you need to supply a product code which is NOT printed on the drive itself. It is not unreasonable to provide this but not printing these clearly on the product is an error (numbers and code cannot be found under the orange rubber covering as well). Of course, as the drive is dead, Lacie’s suggestion to use a software tool is rubbish – nothing shows up.
After many attempts I was able to get a product code by entering the serial number first. Why This is so complicated, I don’t know but it’s made to be complicated and difficult.
On the plus side, Lacie did ship a new drive in less than a week including delivery. Also, the drive is quite fast.
The cable is poorly fitting and of a special type.
Works fine for time machine backups
After using the software on the drive (I Plugged it in using supplied firewire 800 cable), time machine recognised it and went ahead and made backups of my mac, so much faster than the time capsule I had attached to USB 2 port previously.
Plug and Play with TimeMachine backup on a Mac - feels like a robust, well built unit.
I have bought a few of these over the years to operate as Time Machine backups on various Macs due to the Thunderbolt connectivity. This latest version as the Thunderbolt cable pre-fitted in a neat way which saves space. Super fast and sturdy drives. Not the cheapest, but you get what you pay for.
Rugged and beautiful
This is the third LaCie rugged I’ve purchased and they’re great, especially with thunderbolt. Not cheap but small, well protected, fast and haven’t let me down yet. We use them extensively for video work and photo shoots performing on site backups and transfer of files from location to the studio… great piece of mind and they also look beautiful.
Great for my mac
Have had it for a month with no issues – works perfectly.
It’s just effectively a lacie hard drive with a gel case- once you take the gel case off it looks the same as any other drive. But it’s a nice feature just in case it’s dropped. Pity more manufacturers don’t have these cases as standard as they are effectively portable devices like our phones – and we all have cases fir them.
Thumbs up!
These LaCie Rugged external hard drives are awesome. I took some on my around the world motorcycle adventure “TeapotOne” and they never let me down. This is my 3rd unit as I use them for backup when editing vids on the go.
They have incredible protection qualities for your important data, allowing the hard drive to take fairly substantial knocks in transit, as well as offering some protection to the elements too.
A great external hard drive for those who need to protect their files whilst on the go.
A tough product-highly recommended.
This LaCie product provides the reassurance that it will withstand being regularly transported and still work. Data transfer speeds are quite acceptable, particularly video files created over a day’s filming.
Pricy but so worth it!
The king of rugged drives, you pay a premium but you can feel confident your data is safe. With the thunderbolt option you don’t need to give up your limited number of USB ports on the new MBP.
Great hard drive
Great hard drive, only negative is that the cord that comes with it is rather short and the protective (thankfully removable) cause the cord to fall out a lot. If they could improve that, and guarantee a longer cord then would definitely give higher rating.
Quick and Versatile
I use this drive every day for work. Its really fast over USB3 and I like that it has Firewire 800 as we use old Mac pro’s at work. This makes it really versatile as I work on my laptop from home which has USB3.
I really like the look of the drive and the rubber protection means it doesn’t get bashed around in my bag on the commute.
Highly Recommend!
Great device for extra storage. I recently purchased a MacBookPro but it only had 128GB storage as I edit photos this wouldn’t work out. So I already had in mind an external drive.
The LaCie is simple and easy to use. Just plug in and drag and drop files onto it. Check they have copied, then dump files off your hard drive.
I’ve had LaCie drives in the past and never experienced any failures.
The unit is small and compact. It comes well packed and supplied with a USB 3.0 cable! YES CABLE INCLUDED. I emphasise this as the description doesn’t lead you to believe this: yet Amazon encourage you to buy one – or at least it suggests others buy a USB cable.
Tips for set up. If you want to register your drive as part of the set up. Then pull back the rubber bumper at the end the cable plugs in. (Not when attached to the computer) this is where the serial number is.
When you plug it in you’ll get a nice icon on your desktop (like pictured) and use the quick start icon to set it up.
Remember when you’ve finished copying and done. Then click on the LaCie drive icon and drag to your trash bin to eject. If you fail to eject the drive it can possibly cause problems.
It also appears to be a moving hard drive, I wasn’t sure if this when I bought it. Not that it bothers me massively as its sold as a rugged drive. However the next purchase will be solid state as no moving parts. Aside from this for the price you can’t go wrong. I wouldn’t buy a cheaper drive as it is your data you are backing up / storing!
Excellent piece of kit.
How technology advances.I couldn’t believe how compact this hard drive is, Its predecessor was about the size and weight of a wall safe and needed a separate power supply.This little gem is powered via the USB cable and it’s as light as a feather.I recommend this to anyone.
Nice to see a drive of this size that doesn’t need a separate power supply. Quite bulky compared to some drives of this type, but quiet in operation. The rubber surround is a sloppy fit and peels off too easily. The interfaces though are very useful for Mac owners; the old Macs mostly have Firewire 800 and the new ones USB3.0 so it’s well equipped for a variety of machines. Measured data transfer rates using Blackmagic (read/write) are about 75Mb/s on USB3.0, 70Mb/s on Firewire 800, and just over 30Mb/s on USB2.0. Write is slightly faster than read.
Overall a very useful drive for Mac owners in particular and a handy tool for moving around large video and photo file sets.
he bes
La Cie proves that is the best of the best when you talk about hard Disks Drives. Very recommendable and nice model!!!!Works perfectly. An excellent choice to secure my files!!!! Thanks Amazon.
This is my 2nd portable hard drive and seems like the best! Working absolutely fine, faster and password protected area is just wonderful. General formatting for Windows took around 7-8 minutes for entire 1TB but password protection encrypted area for 200GB formatting took around 3 hours; however it is one of best function which can be dismounted any time or can be configured to dismount if idle for whatever time you specify though normal area/unprotected area is always connected unless you disconnect it physically.
When you first plug-in it will give you three option to format 1. Windows 2. Mac or 3. Lynux. Only limitation here is it won’t allow you to partition the Hard Drive which is not a big deal as it can be resolved by making several folders however after the formatting is successfully done then it can be password protected for the size you want. In my case I did 200GB. This protected area is 256 bit encrypted which is very good I guess one of the best industry standard ensured security. By the way no one should make the whole of this hard drive password protected because in that case you cannot use or access this drive in every computer because to access this password protected are you need to run pr-eloaded .exe file which cannot be run unless you are administrator or Power user for that computer i.e. in offices computers are restricted so you cannot access restricted area and if the whole external hard drive is password protected than no meaning of portability . The unprotected area can be access anywhere you want as like any other USB Drive. I am using USB 2.00 though it is absolutely faster i.e. selected whole of 18 GB of documents which transferred around 15 minutes in one go and very quiet, no noise at all. Do hope and pray that price of this product would come down and very soon the company would make 5 TB in the same physical size. Hope it would last long. I would highly recommend this product, without any question you can buy it.