LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series 120GB SSD Drive Review
The Rugged 120GB SSD drive by LaCie is a tough, durable and rugged USB 3.0 and ThunderBolt flash storage drive. It is drop-resistant, and the design also seals the drive from liquid damage. It provides shocking speeds of up to 385 MB/s and doesn’t require any additional power, making it a completely mobile storage solution. It bears a similar design to the LaCie RuggedKey, using the same orange rubber material for the casing. With the Rugged 120GB SSD from LaCie, you can move data more than five times faster than with FireWire 800. It also comes bundled with user-friendly software and provides complete data protection with AES 256-bit encryption.
The drive is sold as a 120GB SSD ($199), 256GB SSD ($349), and 1TB Hard Drive ($249.99 – reduced to $222.99 on Amazon).
The same design of drive is also sold as a cheaper USB 3.0 / Firewire 800 combo, in 500GB for $129.99 and 1TB for $172 via Amazon.
Packaging and Design
I was pleased with the packaging of the drive. It comes in a cardboard box, the top opens, and you can then slide out the drive easily. The drive comes protected in plastic, and the provided cables are supplied in a card box.
The design of this drive gives it a sturdy, tough feel. The rubber case provides great protection from a 1.2-meter drop, and also makes the drive stand out on any desk. The rubber protection is a separate part to the main hard drive, and has been designed specifically to protect against damage. Again I was pleased with the build quality of the hard drive.
My only complaint in terms of design is that the supplied cables are black rather than white, but if it’s that much of an issue, you could always buy white cables separately.
Features
This drive is supplied with a Thunderbolt cable, which is a great bonus because many Thunderbolt devices require you to buy the expensive cable separately. It also comes with a USB 3.0 cable.
Both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connectivity is offered on this mobile drive
10GB of Wuala Secure Cloud Storage is included for one year to store and share your data online with industry-best security.
Performance
LaCie advertises the average transfer rates as 385MB/s for the SSD version, and 110MB/s for the Hard Drive version.
We used AJA System Test to test the 120GB SSD version in the real world, via both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt connectivity.
When connected with Thunderbolt, the drive achieved a maximum of 202.8 MB/s write speed, and 390.9 MB/s read speed.
Editor’s note: LaCie confirmed that the Thunderbolt cable we used for these tests was faulty, which may have affected the speeds achieved in our Thunderbolt speed test.
When connected with USB 3.0, the drive achieved maximum speeds of 196.3MB/s write speed, and 442.1 MB/s read speed.
The 1TB hard drive version does not perform as well as the SSDs for obvious reasons, so the Thunderbolt connectivity doesn’t provide any real world speed benefit if you’re opting for the traditional hard drive instead of SSD. LaCie fits a 5400rpm speed drive instead of 7200rpm, which also reduces performance on the traditional spinning disk version.
Where to Buy Your LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series 120GB SSD Drive
ResExcellence recommends Amazon to purchase your LaCie Rugged 120GB SSD. They also stock the 256GB SSD and 1TB Hard Drive versions of this drive. If your Amazon store doesn’t stock it, it can be ordered via LaCie’s website worldwide.
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