Or you can pay the $30 - $50 markup on a thunderbolt drive and skip the hub altogether and the extra cable spaghetti. I just looked on Amazon and Seagate's 256GB external SSD USB 3.0 is priced at $250.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
LaCie Upgrades Rugged Hard Drive With Integrated Thunderbolt Cable
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Or you can pay the $30 - $50 markup on a thunderbolt drive and skip the hub altogether and the extra cable spaghetti. I just looked on Amazon and Seagate's 256GB external SSD USB 3.0 is priced at $250.
I got two LaCie rugged drives almost a decade ago. The original IDE drives in them are still kicking.
So far they are the best darn portable drives I've ever used, even compared to the G-Drives and G-Raid Minis.
Now, as far as this new drive is concerned, it's not bad. I wish they would've put 7200 rpm drives in it though. I am also not big on including the cable with the drive. Not being able to remove the cable just creeps me out when I think about points of failure.
Doesn't change the fact that thunderbolt has worse support than when FireWire was out.
Thunderbolt still has an advantage over usb3 for TRIM support. For spinning disks I'd use USB3, but thunderbolt is made for SSDs
All I can say to that is at the speeds in the article, USB3 with a 250 SSD will run just as fast for a lot cheaper.
LaCie is now owned by Seagate.
Also, there are no 2TB 7200RPM 2.5" disc drives.
With higher platter densities, the 1TB and 2TB HDDs have higher thruput than older 7200RPM drives from previous years. One advantage that never changes is that latency is less for 7200RPM drives.
For those who only need USB 3.0, there are USB only versions of both the Rugged and Seagate portable drives. If you want FireWire, there's also a FireWire 800/USB 3.0 version of the Rugged.
Different solutions for different people.
I'm always amazed at LaCie's devotion to using the lurid, life-preserver orange. I'm surprised they don't advertise it like:
*in your dreams!
*in your dreams!
The four Lacie Rugged drives I own are still working perfectly. I don't have a Thunderbolt version yet but I do question that attached cable though on the new version. 
Definitely a valid point, and I had exactly that happen to me about a year ago when I purchased a LaCie 1TB USB3/Thunderbolt 'Rugged' drive that came with an included Thunderbolt cable which lasted for all of 20 min.
Apple offered to exchange the entire drive for me, but I ended up getting the APPLE TB cable, and I haven't had any trouble with that drive since.
Can I boot a bootcamped Windows instance off of this drive? I'm tempted to eliminate my Windows system with this.
Nice try...Some 5400pm drives are considerably faster than 7200rpm drives. Also, there are no 2TB 7200rpm drives.
I'll post some 1TB 5400 vs 7200 tests later today. One needs to understand how drives change over time. I've got some 7200rpm drives that are slower than 5400, though same capacity.
7200rpm is not always the fastest. Need to consider data density on the platters.
That is such a generalized comparison its ridiculous. Of course a 7200rpm drive from say, 5 years ago is gonna be slower than a modern 5400. You have to stay within the same tech generation to make a statement like that, and if you try to prove that, you'll find it to be false. Within the same generation of tech, its not gonna happen.
----------
I think most of us here are in agreement that theyre not "pieces of crap", just horribly overpriced for what you're paying for. Its a regular desktop drive in a fancy case with a captive cable and youre paying 50% more for what amounts to likely no more than $10 extra in production costs.
Obviously there are people out there for whom the cost is irrelevant and for them, hey, kudos to you. But even though i make more than enough money to buy several of these, *its the fact that i know im being ripped off at that price point* that makes me dislike these things. Its a good product im sure, but the thunderbolt price rape has got to stop.
That's why I'd prefer eSATA (or eSATAp) drives and ports. Support for ATA features such as TRIM and secure erase and faster than any non-SSD hard drive. The drives and enclosures are affordable too.
Please show me another portable external drive series that has a thick shock protective "bumper" and designed in shock cushioning inside a aluminium case that all conforms to military standard MIL-STD- 810G and P52 rated Ingress Protection ( rain, dust etc) with a 1000G shock rated drive.... usually by Seagate now.
I'll buy one and test it out in the +40C to -35C rough and tumble environments that I frequent.
I agree the captive cable is crap. What were they thinking? That's not rugged, its asking for trouble and I have told them so.
Attached are two Blackmagic Disk Test benchmarks of portable, bus-powered drives:
5400RPM 1TB LaCie P'9223 connected via USB 3.0 to Macbook Air Mid 2013
7200 RPM 1TB Hitachi Touro Pro connected via USB 3.0 Macbook Air mid 2013
Sorry, I don't have any 7200 RPM Thunderbolt portable drives
I'll grant you this, the Hitachi is slightly faster, but not significantly. That extra few MB/sec might be important to some. These are both 2013 generation drives.
And of course, your comment about comparing an old 7200 RPM drive to a new 5400 RPM drive is also true.
My counterpoint is that the broad statement that 7200 RPM drives will always be faster than 5400 RPM drives is not true. It is still dependent on cache size, the number of platters within, as well as the data density on those platters.
My original comment was simply to claim that some 5400 RPM drives can achieve similar speeds to 7200 RPM drives. I'll see if I can find an older 7200 RPM drive in my collection.
Attachments
Theoretically any thunderbolt drive would be able to boot windows. You'll have to get verification from owners though.
thank you for the post. those results are definitely a lot more surprising than i expected.
