LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C 2TB Portable HDD Review

Introduction There can be multiple reasons why you will want your portable storage drive to be a rugged one. You might be on the road a lot for business or pleasure or perhaps you are just a clumsy user who tends to drop and spill things. You might also just want that extra layer of protection for your valuable data, just in case. Whatever the reason might be, LaCie's Rugged series could be just the right drives for you. There are a lot of different drives in this series and LaCie has already shipped over 4 million of them to satisfied users. Today I'm taking a closer look at the newest Rugged family member which features a multitude of connection options and it is also available as both an NAND-based SSD version as well as a mechanical HDD version. Today's review features the 2TB HDD version of the LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C drive. It won't be any surprise if the design looks familiar to you. That could either be because you've seen one of the previous models in the series, which all resemble this one. Maybe you also recognise the design elements from other products designed by the same person. The LaCie Rugged series is designed by industrial product designer Neil Poulton. 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 this Rugged series is no different. Despite a simple-looking design, the LaCie Rugged series is as versatile as it is useful. The rugged part comes from its resilience against elements. It is IP54 rated which means that it is resistant to both dust and water. While the IP54 rating isn't the best, it will protect your drive from dust as well as water spray from any direction. It will survive drops from a height of up to 5 feet/1.5 metres and it can withstand being run over by a 1-ton car. It might get some visible damages, but the drive itself will withstand it. The versatility of this drive doesn't stop with its resistance against elements and users own stupidity such as spilling drinks over it, it is also connectable to pretty much any system. It comes with a Thunderbolt cable built right into the drive, but it isn't limited to that. It also features a USB-C port where you can connect one of the two included cables. With those, you can connect it to USB-C ports, both USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3, but also traditional USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports. With all these options, there really aren't many systems that you can't connect it to. I am testing the 2TB HDD version today which is the largest option in this version. There are 500GB and 1TB SSD options too which will provide faster transfer speeds instead of the larger capacity of the HDD version. Naturally, the SSD versions are faster and they are the ones that truly can take advantage of the Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.1 capabilities, but that doesn't mean that we should discard the HDD option as inferior - because it isn't. Just different. Inside this rugged enclosure is Seagate Barracuda drive for great reliability and performance. These drives feature Multi-Tier Caching Technology (MTC) that help improve application load time, and there are 20 years of manufacturing expertise behind the drives. It is a 2.5-inch sized HDD which does bring some limitations in regards to speed. But in return, the entire things can be bus-powered even on a USB 2.0 interface. A great feature on a portable drive as it means that you don't have to carry around a bulky power adapter and you don't need to be near a power outlet to use it either. Feature Highlights Thunderbolt speeds of up to 510MB/s for the SSD version and up to 130MB/s for the HDD version Up to 2TB for large project storage USB-C for universal connectivity Bus powered for complete mobility Shock, dust, and water resistant for all-terrain use Package and Accessories There aren't many surprises when it comes to the LaCie Rugged's packaging; it looks like we would expect it. The front shows how the drive looks as well as the main features such as connection options, capacity, and performance rating. The rear has more details on the connection options and the ruggedness. Inside is a smaller box with the accessories that also explains how to connect and initialize the drive. Besides the built-in Thunderbolt cable, LaCie included both a Type-C to Type-C and a Type-C to Type-A cable. They aren't long, but we wouldn't want them to be for a portable drive. A Closer Look The LaCie Rugged series are pretty simple, but I still think we should take a closer look at a few of the features and design aspects of the drive. One of the first things you'll notice is the cable that runs around the outer edge of the drive. This is the built-in Thunderbolt cable which Apple users will need - or rather want to use. It is superior to USB and most Mac systems feature this type of connector When the cable is wrapped around the drive, the plug is protected by a cover as seen below. This will keep dust and water away from both the attached plug and the extra USB connector that this drive features. A cool bonus is that there is a second and spare cover in the box, so even if you should lose one, you got a spare. As mentioned previously, the LaCie rugged features an extra connector. It is a USB-C connector that can be used with the two extra cables which are included with the drive for those who don't have Thunderbolt ports. Software The drive is designed for use with both Mac OS and Windows right out of the box, and it comes with a setup assistant to finish the setup for whichever system you're going to use it on. The drive is easy to locate in your file manager, even if you got autostart/autorun disabled thanks to the drive logo which looks like the drive itself. It has a pre-setup partition that contains the setup assistant which will finish the setup, even for users who have no idea how to set up a new drive and format it. The tool will do it for you. The first page with options lets you determine how the drive should be formatted - whether you just want an NTFS or Fat32 partition, or both. Once you've selected your setup with the slider, it will format the drive as asked. Next, you can register the drive with LaCie, but this is an optional choice. The drive itself is ready to be used now, but you can do more. You can also install Adobe's PDF reader to read the included manual and LaCie also bundled the Genie Timeline backup app with the drive. It is free and it can make regular backup jobs a lot easier for you. You can follow the progress on the screen. And shortly after, it is done. Genie Timeline Backup Software The Genie Timeline backup program is real easy to set up and use, it only requires two steps. Select the LaCie, or another drive you want to use as the backup target, and hit the next arrow at the bottom of the screen. Now you can either use the smart selection of files and features. Or you can manually select the folders you want to backup to your portable Rugged drive. Once done, the app will start the backup process. You can pause this at any time to the left on the screen, should you want to do so. Rugged Tests With a drive that's only IP54 rated, it wouldn't be fair to submerge it fully into water. It isn't built for this, but it is built to protect it from rain or other sprayed water. It is however protected from drops from a height of up to 1.5 meters and that's something I can test. My drop test is the one I consider the most common for most people. I swivel my office chair and "accidentally" wipe the drive of the table and let it fall on the floor. I do this five times after which I connect it to the system again. While this page is located before the benchmark tests in this written review, I am doing these drop tests after the benchmarks - just in case it shouldn't survive the drops. But it did survive and it didn't leave a single mark on the drive. It worked just as good after the drops as it did before - no issues what so ever. A very solid build thanks to the rubber encasing. Test Procedure Testing a drive like this is a pretty straight forward process. A mechanical drive does not have the same impact from wear and tear as solid state drives and as such the drive doesn't require any long-time conditioning test. I'll still be running extensive tests with various data fillage scenarios and benchmark applications. First, I'll test the drive empty after which I'll gradually fill it with 25% data at a time and retest it under each of these fill scenarios. This will give us a detailed view on the drive's performance as it fills up and whether that has any impact on the performance or not. For these tests I'll be using the well-known ATTO, Anvil's Storage Utilities, AS SSD, and CrystalDiskMark benchmark tools. Following the fillage tests, I'll be using AIDA 64 and IOmeter to get a more detailed view of the drive's raw performance. These tests run best with an unpartitioned drive and as such exclude data fillage, but in return, we get even more details on the drive's performance, including access times, sequential, and random performance. Test system: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7-EU Intel Core i5-6600K EVGA GTX 980 SC Kingston Fury DDR4 2400MHz 32GB Samsung SM951 NVMe 256GB in RAID 0 be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate Software used: AIDA64 Storage Benchmark Anvil's Storage Utilities ATTO Disk Benchmark AS SSD Benchmark CrystalDiskMark 64bit IOMeter Windows 10 Pro AIDA64 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 has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives and is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one I'll be using. The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives, as the name says, a linear view of the drives overall performance from start to end. 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 actually a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. 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. Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil's Storage Utilities is a new benchmarking utility that we have started using here at eTeknix, it's completely free to download and has the ability to test mainly hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. AS SSD 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. To give a clearer picture of the drives tested, I've chosen to include all tests. Special the copy test is one that I think is relevant on the consumer level as it gives the user a view into one of the operations he's going to do many times. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis ATTO The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customise your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. Empty Drive 75% Data Fillage Drive Performance Analysis Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. 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 Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. IOMeter IOmeter IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization 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. IOMeter allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file. Configurable items within the Access Specifications are Transfer Request Size, Percent Random/Sequential distribution, Percent Read/Write Distribution, Aligned I/O’s, Reply Size, and TCP/IP status among others. Sequential Performance Random Performance Final Thoughts Pricing This drive is all new and it isn't available at the time of writing. Looking at the previous generation LaCie Rugged drives, I would expect it to come in around the $200 / £200 marker. Conclusion The LaCie Rugged series is amazing and it is no different with this Thunderbolt and USB-C 2TB version that I've tested today. We saw some of the best performance figures that we've gotten from portable 2.5-inch HDD drives with chart-topping results. These great results can become even better if you pick one of the SSD versions and that is thanks to the latest generation connection technology. With both Thunderbolt and USB 3.1 Gen.2, the LaCie Rugged drive can deliver the best in portable drive performance. And that is truly amazing, that the LaCie Rugged comes with all these connection options. Whether you got Thunderbolt, USB Type-C, or traditional USB-A connectors, you're able to use this drive for all your precious memories. The Rugged isn't just a name either as the drive comes with an IP54 rating and is protected from dust as well as water. It can even withstand being run over by a 1-ton car. With that kind of protection, you don't need to worry about your data safety when you take your storage into the field - may it be for recreational or professional reasons. Pros Great performance Great protection Multiple connection options Large Capacity and SSD options Bus-powered Cons None "The LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt and USB-C is as versatile as it is protected. A great choice for anyone that wants an extra layer of physical protection for their files." Thank you LaCie for providing us with this sample.