External SSD...OWC vs LaCie experiences anyone?

[Dutch60]

Hello all. In choosing an extrernal portable SSD I could use some advice.
So far only external hard drives here. No experiences with external and portable SSD' s.
I plan to buy one of these in the coming months though.
Important for me are: speed (the faster the better), and very reliable/trustworthy ; good track records here (maybe that leaves out Sandisk at the moment?).
2Tb definitely is enough.
At the moment I' m thinking about either the OWC Envoy Pro FX 2Tb or the LaCie Rugged Pro 2Tb.
If you have any experiences with one of these , or even both.....please share!
Thank you very much!

 

[Bigwaff]

Important for me are: speed (the faster the better)

What model Mac will you be connecting the drive to?

 

[Dutch60]

At the moment I still use 2019 27” iMac /Intel.
I plan to buy a M3 Mac next year…maybe Studio, iMac (larger than 24”), or Mac Mini. Ofcourse if available then (I hope I’ll have a choice).

 

[Average Pro]

Hello all. In choosing an extrernal portable SSD I could use some advice.
So far only external hard drives here. No experiences with external and portable SSD' s.
I plan to buy one of these in the coming months though.
Important for me are: speed (the faster the better), and very reliable/trustworthy ; good track records here (maybe that leaves out Sandisk at the moment?).
2Tb definitely is enough.
At the moment I' m thinking about either the OWC Envoy Pro FX 2Tb or the LaCie Rugged Pro 2Tb.
If you have any experiences with one of these , or even both.....please share!
Thank you very much!

I've been using a LaCie 2TB Bolt 3 Thunderbolt 3 External SSD since early 2019. Still humming along and it gets used a lot. I have begun the process of looking for a replacement. Found the LaCie 4TB Big Dock but that's been around since at least 2020.

Note, this is externally powered which is what I prefer. Looking forward to additional recommendations.

 

[Dutch60]

Thnxs Average Pro. I also have good experiences with LaCie (but external hard drives).
I hope some can comment more with personal experiences.

 

[Dutch60]

By the way...(to complete my earlier post), at the moment I use LaCie d2 Professional 10Tb permanently attached to my iMac (also for Time Machine backups). 2 other external hard drives for extra backup (1 LaCie/1 Western Digital).

 

[H_D]

I used LaCie 5Big, 6Big (both Raid5, about 36TB), two 2BigDocks with 32 and 40 TB). Al of these are fine, but keep in mind, that you need the LaCie driver and RAID-Software which, well, doesn't have the best support possible. I remember waiting for updates to new OS-versions and problems with maintenance of my drives and have switched, now using TerraMaster and the new SanDisk Drive Mirror, which is surprisingly silent, fast and good so far, despite being in a plastic housing – both of these go without any software and have (simple) hardware RAID-options. The TerraMaster is very nice, but a bit loud, and the SanDisk is really worth a look, especially since it also includes the option to use SSD up to 4TB on the same TB-cable with their ProBlade-System.

Regarding OWC I used the Thunderblade SSD with 8TB (build from 2TB RAID0) and recently their Duo Mini with 2 Samsung-8TB-SSD in Raid0 (following a tip from this forum) and both run with zero problems. Both get a bit hot, as SSD tend to do, but nothing problematic. The Thunderblade is as fast as external TB3-SSD can run, the Samsung-SSDs are slow, but that is okay for cheap 16TB of Backup-SSDs.

I read online regarding the new LaCie Docks, that they changed their production a bit and heat dissipation – already a problem with earlier models – has become a real HDD-Killer. Their support is really bad, I have waited days for answers and those were not really helpful (while TerraMaster has been amazingly helpful confirming drives for their enclosures etc). I really really liked LaCie as a trailblazer in terms of High-end-TB3-performance and utterly nice design, but I feel that those days might be over under Seagate.

If you're looking for a solid 2—4 TB SSD, depending on the speed you need, you can do cheaper and better with other brands, such as Crucial, Samsung and even SanDisk (which I personally so far did not have any issues with, but read the PetaPixel-articles first ;-)).

 

[Dutch60]

Thank you H_D. I read the PetaPixel articles on SanDisk. I never had any problems with their cards and I' ll stay using them. For external SSD' s though, it might be wise to look elsewhere (not sure).
Speed and reliability come first here (as said in my first post). So far no problems with LaCie harddrives. That doesn't mean very much for their external / portable SSD's I guess (but maybe it does).
The speed of those OWC Thunderblades look very positive. Their costs not soo much though. Connection with Western Digital? Like SanDisk has?