LaCie Rugged SSD Review – 1TB Portable Drive Tested
LaCie Rugged SSD – Premium NVMe SSD
If you are really rough on your portable drives or ever had one fail due to environmental reasons, the LaCie Rugged SSD might be what you need. This external NVMe SSD has speeds of up to 950 MB/s and is rated IP67 for water resistance, three-meter drop tolerance, and two-ton car crush resistance! It also comes with Seagates five-year limited warranty and Rescue Data Recovery Services plan. The Rescue Data Recovery Services gives you one in-lab data recovery attempt to get lost data back and they have over a 90% success rate! LaCie is the premium brand from Seagate Technology, so this is as good as it gets!
The LaCie Rugged SSD is available in capacities of 500GB ($179.99), 1TB ($229.99) and 2TB ($451.99). The target audience is creative, media and entertainment (M&E) professionals that work not only indoors, but out in the real world! So, here you have an external NVMe SSD that was built to be tough for vloggers, emerging videographers, freelancers, indie filmmakers. That is also why LaCie includes a complimentary 1-month subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud All-Apps plan featuring Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and more with the purchase of the drive.
Seagate sent over the LaCie Rugged SSD 1TB model to review that is sold under part number STHR1000800. This drive is currently priced at $229.99 shipped and that makes it about $0.23 per GB.
Inside the box you’ll find a 14cm USB Type-C to Type-C cable, 14cm USB Type-C to Type-A cable, quick install guide, safety/warranty guide, the PSID code to wipe the drive and finally the the drive itself. The LaCie Rugged SSD features AES 256-bit hardware encryption. This self-encrypting technology with password protection enables you to keep your projects confidential.
The LaCie Rugged SSD 1TB measures 98mm x 65mm x 17mm and our 1TB sample tipped the scaled at 134 Grams without the cable. The enclosure feels as solid as a brick if you tap on it and it should be since it offers IP67 strength!
Inside you’ll find a JMicron JMS583 A2 USB 3.1 Gen2 to PCIe/NVMe bridge chip and a Seagate FireCuda 510 NVMe SSD. The Seagate FireCuda 510 uses the Phison E12 SSD controller, KIOXIA BiCS3 TLC NAND Flash (64-Layer) and 1GB DDR4 DRAM.
On the back of the silicone shell you’ll find the usual regulatory information, part number, serial number, capacity, place of manufacturer and so on. This model was designed by Scottish industrial & product designer Neil Poulton, who has worked on numerous LaCie designs in recent years.
The USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C connector is located along the front edge of the drive and there is a single activity/power LED light just to the left of the connector under the silicone shell. The light appears to be white, but it glows orange due to the sleeve over the aluminum enclosure. All the power for this external drive is bus-powered, so no external power source is needed.
Let’s move along and see how this drive actually performs!