LaCie 160 GB Rugged Hard Drive USB 2.0/FireWire400/FireWire800 8MB Cache

5 Responses to “LaCie 160 GB Rugged Hard Drive USB 2.0/FireWire400/FireWire800 8MB Cache”

1. R. Auger Says:
   June 14th, 2010 at 6:22 pm

   This thing takes a likin and keeps on tickin. I’m a college student and wanted to be able to edit pictures on-the-go instead of confined into my room, but still maintain speed, reliability, and size. I use it almost exclusively for my Aperture photo library, and I must say it its quite fast. I’ve dropped it a few times and throw it in my computer backpack with my MacBook Pro and its with throughout the day around my campus.

   I got it because of the sturdiness and the fact that’s its one of the few portable, but powered FW800 drives, allowing fast transfers with large files, as well as daisychaining other devices to it without slowdown in speed; I have confirmed this through my own informal testing with 100gb transfers. I love that there is no AC adapter but its just as fast as most external powered drives, except maybe my Lacie RAID drive at home.

   With Photoshop and Aperture:

   If you’ve ever gone into the Photoshop settings, you’ll notice it recommends to have a scratch disk separate from the disk Photoshop is on. Also, most pros know to have even the pictures on a separate disk for optimal speed. Aperture and Photoshop go must faster with this disk hooked up, since the built in drive isn’t bouncing around between Photoshop, system, and picture files. Also, since Aperture views and manipulates a lot of photos at once, I’ve notices a serious speed advantage when using FW400, FW800, and USP in my own testing with this drive.

   Triple Interface:

   The FW800 is fantastic. I hook it to my big external raid drive at home. You can actually daisychain another device to it, either a FW400 or FW800, depending on the port you use. The other device can be powered too. So you don’t necessarily need a second FW800 like on bigger hard drives to do daisychaining.

   I’ve hooked my Rugged HD directly to my notebook, with a big hard drive hooked to that, with my scanner and printer hooked to the big hard drive. Meaning, I have 4 devices hooked to my itty bitty HD without loss of speed: yup, while printing, I still got transfer speeds of almost 60mb per second.

   This also means I don’t need to use a hub.

   Speed Testing:

   This depends for every HD; 1GB of little files transfers faster than one 1GB file. But I get between 35mb and 60mb per second on 100gb transfers. My old Firelite USG got about 12-15mb per/s, and a more modern cheap Western digital got 20-25. There is a difference between all three interfaces. My Lacie RAID gets up to 80mb/sec.

   Overall:

   Yes it’s a little pricey, but the thing is fast and durable. Plus, the much more fragile G-Techs, the only other big name FW800 portable drives, are even more money. If you need something that goes with you on the go quite frequently and is fast, this is the drive for you. And if your notebook had FW800, don’t skip out on spending the extra money on this one. The HD is a little bigger than most portable HD, but it has more airspace inside to protect the disk from impact. To most people, the size difference isn’t that noticeable.

   Oh yes, and the rubber ring stays on secure, but is pretty easy to take off, and has screws going around so you can probably put a bigger drive into it in the future.
   Rating: 5 / 5

2. Jared Vorkavich Says:
   June 14th, 2010 at 8:21 pm

   I love this drive (as much as one can love a hard drive)! It’s even smaller than it looks and extremely light-weight. I use the FireWire 800 connection primarily with my PowerBook for photo editing and it is incredibly fast. I’ve always been impressed with LaCie’s design, engineering and reliability. If I had to give any negative comment, it’s that there’s no light to indicate it’s actually on or doing something, but since my computer sees it instantly and I can feel a slight vibration if I touch it, I always know it’s working.
   Rating: 5 / 5

3. Living in the Redwoods Says:
   June 14th, 2010 at 9:42 pm

   I have used three earlier versions of this rugged HD for backup for years without a single failure. I still use a 10GB “Pocket drive” for one mac at home. Granted, I keep my new back up drive unplugged most of the time to mimimize mechanical wear and tear. The rubber bumper and high shock resistance of the internal 3.5″ drives have prevented any data loss when the La Cie HD gets pushed around in my tote bags or brief case. They are whisper quiet when they are in use. The only thing I miss on the current 160GB model is a power on-activity LED. On the older rugged drives the green LED would flash yellow when data was being transferred or the drive was being unmounted by my Macs so I could tell when NOT to unplug the USB or firewire cable. Now I just wait 10-15 seconds after My Mac unmounts the 160GB drive and then unplug the cable. Summary: more expensive than other portable drives but very reliable & durable.
   Rating: 5 / 5

4. Adam Says:
   June 14th, 2010 at 10:54 pm

   After dropping my beautiful, but evidently not very rugged lacie porsche drive and finding that it was instantly dead, I needed a new portable drive with decent capacity to shuttle between the office and home. (I keep an evolving backup on the portable drive, and keep all the machines in sync this way)
   
   The rugged drive seemed like a good bet– a little expensive and small in storage capacity, but maybe a little more robust than the porsche drive, to fulfill a similar purpose.
   
   The pros:
   
   – it’s quiet
   
   – both USB and firewire, and bus powered
   
   – I’m hoping that it’s robust to a short drop, but not planning on testing this…

   The cons:
   
   – only in orange. I don’t mind orange, but I liked the silver porsche drive, and wouldn’t have minded a less conspicuous design for this one.
   
   – the rubber surrounding is kind of loose, it’s really just wrapped around the sides, not very huggy at all. this struck me as totally cheap and disappointing. it’s just a little drive in this “scarf”, kind of like the bumpers were tacked on as an afterthought
   
   – it gets very hot, much hotter than the porsche drive did.
   
   – for USB bus power, you have to plug in two USB cables. a real hassle on a powerbook with USB ports on opposite sides.

   Overall, I’m satisfied with its functionality, but don’t find much to be excited about. I had been hoping to see some innovative designs, larger capacities, and price reductions in the portable drive market since the last time I bought one a few years ago, but this drive has very much a status quo kind of feel.
   Rating: 3 / 5

5. Simon A. Gerzina Says:
   June 14th, 2010 at 11:41 pm

   I purchased this unit as portable backup storage. I’m a professional photographer and videographer, and when traveling for work I religiously pack portable hard disks with the rest of my equipment in order to back up media that is downloaded to my laptop.

   First of all, the triple interfaces on this unit are a huge boon: while working, the FW400 port on my MacBook Pro is generally being used by an external CompactFlash Reader, so being able to plug in the drive using the available FW800 port minimizes swapping. Being bus-powered over FireWire is even better.

   While the bright-orange color wasn’t my choice, in retrospect it’s not so bad: I always know where it is at a glance. The external chassis doesn’t feel as durable as I might like (especially for something that claims to be ruggedized) but I imagine that the soft bumpers would have some value if dropped. I think the body is a little larger than it needs to be, considering how small the drive inside really is, and a smaller unit would certainly be welcome in my pack.

   Performance seems solid. I’m not moving enormous amounts of data at once, so I can’t compare effectively to other drives, but it’s subjectively felt on-par with other external drives I own and attach via FW800.

   In short, definitely recommended, especially for photographers and others who run the risk of abusing their gear on the go.
   Rating: 4 / 5