LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt USB-C 2TB Review

1. Introduction2. LaCie Thunderbolt USB-C 2TB3. ATTO/CrystalDiskMark/AS SSD4. Real Life5. Backup/Restore6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

LaCie are Seagate's premium brand and the Rugged range of external drives sit under the company's Professional banner. Instantly recognisable by their bright orange Neil Poulton designed protective enclosures, the Rugged series has been around for over a decade. The range is constantly changing and updating to reflect advances in drive technology, i.e. SSD versions and interfaces, i.e the Thunderbolt and USB-C connections the review drive uses.

The drive is IP54 rated. The IP (Ingress Protection or International Protection Rating) rating is an international standard to define the sealing levels of electrical enclosures against dirt and water. The first digit indicates the level of protection against solids while the second indicates the protection against water. The first digit ranges from 0 (no protection) up to 6 for something that is dust tight. The second digit ranges from 0 (no protection) up to 8 – full protection from total immersion in water beyond 1m.

An IP54 rating means that the Rugged is protected from limited dust ingress and protected from water spray from any direction with limited ingress protection.

Not only is the drive protected from the elements, it also is protected from unwanted tinkering with any data with its AES 256-bit encryption. The drive comes with a three-year warranty.

To make the most of the performance the Thunderbolt and USB-C connections offer, you really need one of the two smaller capacity SSD versions – but if you need huge capacity over speed then the standard HDD versions should do the trick.

At the time of writing this review, we couldn't find the drive on sale anywhere but it's priced at £229.99 inc VAT.

Pros

• Data Protection.
• Choice of connections.

Cons

• Expensive.
• Not exactly pocket sized.

Kitguru says: Yes it might be expensive, but as the old adage says “what price your data?”. If you need to carry around very large amounts of data in hostile environments, LaCie's Rugged drive should fit the bill. And of course being bright orange means it should be harder to lose.

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