Customer Reviews

LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 301015 120 GB USB 2.0/FireWire400/FireWire800 Portable Hard Drive

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Ruggedness:

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.

120GB is just the right size to backup the 100GB disk on My MacBook Pro. I used the FW400 interface (it comes with FW400, FW800, and USB2) and the data moves along at almost 1GB/min, which is fine for me.

It does suck down the battery in my laptop, but I like that there is only one wire to wory about (no external wall wart). A 50GB backup just about flattened a full laptop battery.

My drive came formatted as MacOS Extended (111.78GB capacity) and all I had to do was plug it in and start draging files over to it. Super quiet too.

I hope the drive that I received was an anomaly because LaCie usually makes great products. This drive ran great except for one thing, it ran HOT. I measured a surface temperature of 122F/49C in an ambient temperature of 72F after a run time of 30 minutes. My other portable drives run below 100F. I called LaCie and they told me I didn't need to worry until the temperature reached 125F. To me a 3 degree margin is entirely unacceptable. Luckily Amazon was great about giving me a refund. On the positive side the triple interface is great and the price is reasonable. The rugged feature of this drive is also nice and I imagine it works far better than strategically wrapping rubber bands around a portable drive.

I had been trying to figure out what was the best portable hard drive for my Mac. I decided on the LaCie120GB Rugged All-Terrain External Hard Drive with Triple Interface because of the reviews I had read regarding the ease and reliability with a Mac. I am very pleased with this product. My files transfer very fast and it survived a fall to the floor. It is already formated for the Mac, it doesn't need a power supply, just plug and play. It says it also works for Windows PCs.

the drive works well, seems to copy items pretty quickly with firewire connection. the orange rubber cover looks cooler than it is - sort of flimsy & removeable. all lacie drives i have had have worked fine. a bit overpriced perhaps, but reliability may be worth the price.

I tried the Maxtor Mini III because we like our bigger desktop external drive (Maxtor one touch) which works great...but the mini did not do so well...all kinds of problems...so I researched and found this LaCie Rugged to be just what I needed and it is great! Nice design...I like the rubber on the edges of it...grips a table better rather than being slippery metal and sliding off. Fast on the Firewire 800, have not tried the 400 or USB for this yet. I plugged the LaCie into MacBook Pro and it was right there on desktop ready for files to be dragged to it. No install of software, just ready! The 800 firewire cable to it is on the short side so I did accidently drop it already when I went to move my laptop a little bit. The fall was not far and it was on a rug but handled it well. No probs.
Quiet but it does vibrate...if you set it on a tv tray and put your hand on the surface of the tv tray , you can feel quite a vibration...but it must be a good thing...the drive is rotating/spinning well :)

I am a graduate student and I needed a potable hard disk for my laptop. I researched almost all the brands and finally found LaCie. My main requirement is that the hard disk shouldnt require external power and should be rugged enough to be able to carry it in my backpack. LaCie is a perfect fit for my needs and has been working awesome until now on Vista and Win XP. The CNet expert reviews also suggested that LaCie is the fastest among the portable hard drives. I just had to format it to NTFS when I plugged it in for the first time (I think there are no instructions available in the manual for NTFS formatting).

I carried the disk in my back pack all the way to India during my vacation. I travelled extensively there and dragged the disk in Indian trains and buses. It is very reliable and works really fast. I have also transferred data in excess of 70GB and I didnt find any problems with heating. The only reason I gave 4 stars is because of the cost. The product is little costlier than its peers, but I think it is worth the price.

A very speedy, quiet hard drive with good looks, ideal for a professional or small company. The bright orange soft cover makes it stand out. The triple interface helps if you don't have the right port available or the right cable. I started with 1 and ended up buying 4.

This drive runs very hot with constant use. If you just need it for occasional use then you may be ok. I used mine everyday and after about 5 months it died.

Arrived on schedule and worked first time no hassles. I use it to back up all my Mac Powerbook content before I travel overseas - the Firewire connection makes for a very fast transfer capability and the fact it powers directly off the port instead of requiring a separate power adaptor is an added bonus.