LaCie Rugged Secure 2TB Encrypted and Portable HDD Review

Introduction LaCie Rugged Secure 2TB Encrypted and Portable HDD Review When you're looking for something that is secure against physical as well as digital threats, then you need something special. LaCie's Rugged Secure (product link) is just such a thing, and today I'm taking a closer look at this drive. The Rugged Secure combines all the awesome features of the Rugged series with AES 256-bit hardware encryption. Rain, dust, bumps, and spying eyes, it has protection against it all. LaCie Rugged Series The Rugged series by LaCie is well-known by most. Its design and features are legendary, and it's most likely the go-to device for a lot of active people. The actual size of the Rugged drives may vary a bit, depending on the model, but the overall design stays the same. It was created by the industrial product designer Neil Poulton, and it's been a trademark for the series since the beginning. His designs have won countless awards, including the prestigious IF Design Award and the Red Dot Design Award on multiple occasions. Neil Poulton specialises in the design of 'deceptively simple-looking mass-produced objects', and LaCie's Rugged series is no different. All-Terrain Storage The Rugged Secure doesn't have an official IP rating, at least not according to the specifications. It still has the resilience of an IP54 rated product, or close to it. The connection port is exposed on this version of the series which means that dust protection can't be guaranteed at all times. At least that's my guess. It is still rain resistant, and it can withstand drops from a height of up to 1.2 metres. It's also very crush resistant. The Rugged Secure can withstand being rolled over by a 1-ton car. The rubber sleeve around the drive will also offer a great shock resistance in general. Special Feature: Hardware AES-256 Encryption The special feature in this version of the Rugged is the AES-256 256-bit hardware encryption. Keeping your files safe and secure is more important than ever at this time. With the recent changes in Europe regarding data privacy, it's vital for companies to protect their customer data. Data breaches and loss can be fined, but there's no need to risk that. By encrypting your data, no one can access it despite finding a lost drive or stealing it from you. They might get the hardware, but not the data. It can be used as a normal drive without encryption, but then you might as well get the normal Rugged portable HDD. Once you enable the protection and set your password through the LaCie Toolkit, you'll be prompted to enter it every time you connect or power-on your system. Connection and Cabling The Rugged Secure features a USB 3.0 port on the drive itself. It is a Type-C port which is compatible with Thunderbolt 3 hosts too. LaCie included a Type-C and a Type-A connector cable, so you aren't limited by the availability of a Type-C port on your host system. The drive is bus-powered, so there's no need for an external power supply. That's convenient for everyday usage, but it's even more convenient when you take it with you on the go. The fewer things you have to bring and less weight to carry is a bonus at any time. Peace of Mind with Seagate Rescue There is a default 2-year warranty on the Rugged Secure, but that's not all. LaCie also included a 2-year Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Services plan. With it, you get professional help to recover your data in the event of a failure. While it isn't important for most home users who don't store anything that vital, it is for business users. Losing data can cost a lot for a company, in lost hours, pay, and possible lost customers. When there's a lot at play, safety is key. The LaCie Rugged Secure delivers that on all fronts; from a rugged design over hardware encryption to data recovery service. A complete package. Performance When it comes to performance, there are two official ratings depending on where you look. One is 110MB/s, and the other is 130MB/s. Both are on par for a 2.5-inch hard drive which is what's inside this tiny file locker. Bonus Content There's further bonus content included. There's a coupon for the Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan for 1-month. The coupon is worth $74.99 or £75.85 and offers a lot. You get access to the entire collection of 20+ creative desktop and mobile apps. That includes Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, and Adobe XD CC. There's also 100GB of cloud storage for your portfolio and up to 10TB cloud storage. The idea is, of course, to get you hooked, so you continue to subscribe after the first month. That's the same as with any free trial deals. But if you were planning on getting it anyway, then it's a nice bonus. It gives you the freedom to try it all out, find out what you need, and then limit yourself to that. Physical Size and Weight of the Drive A portable drive needs to be small and light. It shouldn't be a hassle nor a worry to bring your files when you need them. Since the drive is bus-powered, there's no need to carry an extra power supply. That's already a bonus. The drive isn't much larger than a 2.5-inch drive, despite the great protection. With measurements of 86 by 135 by 19 millimetres, it won't take up a lot of space. The 270 grammes shouldn't weigh you down on your trips either. For comparison reasons, I've put it next to a standard 3.5-inch drive in the photos you see below. Feature Highlights Seagate Secure encryption technology with AES-256 hardware encryption USB-C connector with universal compatibility with Thunderbolt and USB Drop-, shock-, crush-, and rain-resistant for all-terrain use Drop resistance: 4-ft (1.2m) Crush resistance: 1-ton car Water resistance: rain 2-year limited warranty 2-year Rescue Data Recovery Services plan Package and Accessories The LaCie Rugged package is a simple one, as those for most storage drives are. The front displays the series name, the drive, the capacity, and special features. Everything you'd want to know before you even pick it up. On the rear side of the box are some more details about the special features. That includes the hardware encryption, connectivity, resistance, and included Rescue Data Recovery Service. The sides (not pictured) have an actual-size representation of the drive on one side and the specifications on the other side. When you slide the content out, it splits into two: the drive and the accessory pack. The accessory pack also displays a quick-setup guide for the drive. Inside the package, you'll find two connection cables. The orange cable is for the latest USB Type-C (USB-C) and Thunderbolt 3 systems. Legacy systems gain support through the black cable which allows you to connect the drive to any USB Type-A port. There are a bunch of small notes included too. For the bonus content, there's a note for the Adobe Creative Cloud and one for the Seagate Rescue Plan. There's also a backup note with the Secure Code and Reset Code for the drive itself. Software Package The Rugged Secure comes with the LaCie toolkit which enables all the extra functions. Setup The installation doesn't take up a lot of space nor does it take a lot of time. During the setup, it will guide you through some of the various settings and options, including drive optimisation. It will also tell you about the secure functions, which is one of the reasons you'll pick this drive. The setup is easy, just enter the SID number and create a password And that's it. All is done. Usage Once installed, the tool will reside in your tray area from where you can launch it. From here, you'll get access to all the functions and drive information. Backup, restore, and mirror your data. Enable or disable the security, lock the drive, and read the user manual. A feature such as crypto-erase is also available when needed. Test Setup & Methodology Data Fillage There are many ways to test a storage drive, and we have chosen to include close to every test possible. We will start with a typical benchmark analysis of the formatted drive with various village scenarios. A mechanical drive will have to move its read-heads over the surface to reach the data location, and that has a natural impact on the performance. To see the impact it might have, the drive will be tested empty as well as with 25%, 50%, and 75% space usage. For these tests, we will be using Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AS SSD Benchmark, ATTO Benchmark, and CrystalDiskMark. Plain Drive Performance Following the fillage tests, the partition gets removed, and we check the drive’s raw performance. These tests will determine the hardware’s capabilities while eliminating any interference from the set file system. AIDA64’s storage benchmark and IOmeter are both great tools for this, and they help us paint an even clearer picture of the drive. The IOmeter tests I run are quite different from the rest as they will give a final result after a longer performance test rather than a maximum or average score; this gives us yet another view of the tested drive over the regular tests. Hardware Supermicro C7Z270-PG Intel Core i7-7700K Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz (4x8GB) Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 (1200W) Noctua NH-D15S Software used: AIDA64 Storage Benchmark Anvil's Storage Utilities AS SSD Benchmark ATTO Benchmark CrystalDiskMark IOMeter Windows 10 Pro Each of the following pages will contain the benchmark screenshots with 0% and 75% data fillage for the base apps. The comparing charts will show the drives with 0% fillage for comparison reasons. The analysis charts show us how steady the performance is across the drive's surface and as it fills up. Drive Analysis: AIDA64 Storage Benchmark AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. It provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one I'll be using. Random Performance The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. Access Times The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Drive Analysis: Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil's Storage Utilities is a relative new benchmarking utility that can test hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. It is also free, which is a bonus in any case. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Drive Comparison For comparison reasons, the drive comparison chart will use values from the fresh and empty drive. Drive Analysis: AS SSD Benchmark The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests, the program measures the time it takes to read and write a 1 GB file respectively. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Drive Comparison For comparison reasons, the drive chart will use values from the fresh and empty drive. Drive Analysis: ATTO Disk Benchmark The ATTO Disk Benchmark is a performance measurement tool is for Windows. It measures storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for both reads and writes. It has multiple options available to customise your performance measurement, including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. ATTO can be used to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives, so it is a popular tool everywhere. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Drive Comparison For comparison reasons, the drive comparison chart will use values from the fresh and empty drive. Drive Analysis: CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random 4KB/512KB read/write speeds. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Drive Comparison For comparison reasons, the drive comparison chart will use values from the fresh and empty drive. Drive Analysis: IOmeter IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterisation tool for single and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmark and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behaviour of many popular applications. One commonly quoted measurement provided by the tool is IOPS. Where most benchmarks show an average value, our IOmeter tests are a little different and show us the final result after a 20 minute continuously running test. Sequential Performance Random Performance Encrypted Analysis: AIDA64 Storage Benchmark AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. It provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one I'll be using. Random Performance The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. Access Times The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Encrypted Analysis: Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil's Storage Utilities is a relative new benchmarking utility that can test hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. It is also free, which is a bonus in any case. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Encrypted versus Plain Drive-Mode Comparison Encrypted Analysis: AS SSD Benchmark The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests, the program measures the time it takes to read and write a 1 GB file respectively. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Encrypted versus Plain Drive-Mode Comparison Encrypted Analysis: ATTO Disk Benchmark The ATTO Disk Benchmark is a performance measurement tool is for Windows. It measures storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for both reads and writes. It has multiple options available to customise your performance measurement, including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. ATTO can be used to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives, so it is a popular tool everywhere. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Encrypted versus Plain Drive-Mode Comparison Encrypted Analysis: CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random 4KB/512KB read/write speeds. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis The drive-analysis shows the drive's performance over various fillage scenarios. The straighter the line, the better the result. We want a consistent performance across the entire drive. Encrypted versus Plain Drive-Mode Comparison Encrypted Analysis: IOmeter IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterisation tool for single and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmark and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behaviour of many popular applications. One commonly quoted measurement provided by the tool is IOPS. Where most benchmarks show an average value, our IOmeter tests are a little different and show us the final result after a 20 minute continuously running test. Sequential Performance Random Performance Final Thoughts and Pricing Pricing Secure storage such as the LaCie Rugged Secure doesn't have to break your budget. Sure, it does cost a little more than a standard drive, but it also offers a lot more. At the time of writing, the Rugged Secure 2TB can be yours for £131.91 or £121.00 at Amazon. Final Thoughts LaCie's Rugged Secure is a new drive in a familiar design. As all the other Rugged-series drives, the Secure carries the same Neil Poulton design. The USB-C connector, which is compatible with Thunderbolt 3, makes it optimal for any modern system. An included Type-A cable delivers compatibility with any older system. The design isn't just for the looks, it's also a very durable drive. That's a fact which the drive series gives away with its name. It is drop, crush, shock, and rain resistant - making it a perfect companion for active people. On top of that, you get the AES-256 hardware encryption. Performance The drive delivers a solid performance as-is, right on par with what you'd expect from such a drive. When you enable the encryption, you'll lose a little performance. While that's true, you'll still get a sufficient performance for most tasks. Especially if you consider that a drive like this will carry more documents than it will hundreds of GB worth videos. Not said that it couldn't do the latter. Extras You might have noticed a price above which is a little higher than other 2TB portable drives. But it really isn't, not when you consider all the facts. There is the hardware encryption engine, but also an included 2-year rescue data service. Should the worst case happen, then Seagate's experienced people are ready to do their best to recover your data. That is a feature that shouldn't be forgotten and one that can be worth a lot. You also get 1-month of Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan. Pros Durable and suited for rough terrain Hardware encryption for data safety 2-years Data Rescue Plan included Cons Slight performance loss when encryption is used "LaCie proves that durability and encryption can be in the same drive. The Rugged Secure offers a great protection as well as recovery service if the worst should happen." Thank you, LaCie, for providing us with this sample