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Review: LaCie's New Portable SSD is Pocket-Sized With Up to 2TB Storage and Fast Transfer Speeds

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LaCie, Seagate's premium brand, today announced the launch of the new LaCie Portable SSD, a palm-sized storage device with up to 2TB of storage space.

The new Portable SSD is one of LaCie's smallest and lightest SSD options, with the 1TB model measuring in at about three and a half inches long and just under three inches wide. It's pocketable at about 1/4 of an inch thick, and it easily fits into a bag or backpack without taking up much space.

lacieportablessd2.jpg

LaCie says this drive is suitable for on-the-go use with drop resistance of up to two meters. We dropped it a few times from a two-meter height onto wood flooring to test LaCie's claim, and the SSD suffered no harm.

The SSD is made from a black plastic material with a red-rimmed black metal plate at the top that catches the light and looks quite attractive. There's unobtrusive LaCie branding at the top of the drive and a white LED at the front that comes on when it's plugged into a computer. The LED is a bit too bright in a dimmer room, but it's not a dealbreaker.

LaCie offers the Portable SSD drive in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities, so there are a total of three models at three price points. 500GB of storage costs $125, 1TB of storage costs $270, and 2TB of storage costs $540.

lacieportablessd.jpg

LaCie says that the Portable SSD features USB 3.1 Gen 2 with maximum read/write speeds up to 540/500MB/s, which wasn't too far off of the speeds that we saw in our testing of the 1TB review unit that LaCie sent for evaluation ahead of the product's launch.

Using a Blackmagic Disk Speed Test with a 2016 MacBook Pro, read speeds for us maxed out at about 524MB/s, while write speeds maxed out at 485MB/s. We didn't quite see LaCie's maximum speeds with the 1TB model, but it was still quick.

laciediskspeedtest.jpg

Transferring 45GB of photos from the MacBook Pro to the LaCie drive took just about four minutes, and LaCie says that you can transfer one hour of 4K 30fps footage (aka 30GBs) to the drive in about a minute. We didn't see transfer speeds quite that fast, but on the 1TB model, but it wasn't far off.

Transfer speeds will, of course, differ based on what other peripherals you might have plugged into your Mac and your Mac's overall workload. During testing, the Portable SSD stayed cool, getting only the slightest bit warm when transferring a large number of files.

LaCie ships the Portable SSD with both a USB-C to USB-C cable for connecting USB-C accessories to one of Apple's Macs with a USB-C port and a USB-C to USB-A port to connect it a Mac with a USB-A port, so it's compatible with both. You won't get USB 3.1 Gen 2 speeds with a USB-A port though, so be aware of that.

lacieinhand.jpg

The drive comes formatted in exFAT, so it is compatible with both Mac and Windows machines, but it can be reformatted using the Disk Utility feature in macOS. It comes equipped with a link for registration and to download the LaCie Toolkit software for managing the device.

LaCie's software is designed to sync files between mirrored folders on your computer and the Portable SSD and it is not required.

LaCie's drive features a three-year warranty and a three-year Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Plan that offers data recovery should the drive fail.

Bottom Line

If you need ultraportable storage for uploading and saving content while on the go, LaCie's new Portable SSD is worth checking out thanks to its small size, durability, and fast transfer speeds. It is pricier than some other options that you might find on Amazon, but it does come with a three-year warranty, which is worth taking into account.

laciedesign.jpg

How to Buy

The LaCie Portable SSD can be purchased starting this month from third-party resellers like Best Buy, Adorama, B&H Photo, and more. 500GB of storage is available for $125, 1TB of storage is available for $270, and 2TB of storage is available for $540.

Note: LaCie provided MacRumors with a 1TB Portable SSD for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.

Article Link: Review: LaCie's New Portable SSD is Pocket-Sized With Up to 2TB Storage and Fast Transfer Speeds
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/review/lacie-portable-ssd/
How do these stack up against the Samsung T5? These appear to be a larger form factor but a direct competitor of a widely used and respected product. Sorry, but if you are going to take the time to write this up, a note about a comparison to that product is not only warranted but really imperative.
 
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bladerunner2000 said:
Get yourself any regular 2TB SSD from Samsung, Sandisk or WD for roughly $350 and slap it inside a $10 USB 3.0 enclosure and you've got the same product.
Click to expand...

Or for a comparable price (~$375), this SanDisk: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078T9SZ3K/

I'm a cheapskate myself, and waiting for SSD prices to drop some more before I upgrade my big external media drive...
 
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Seeing as a 2TB Samsung SATA SSD costs $350 and SSDs aren’t susceptible to data corruption from drops, this does seem like an awfully pricey markup — especially when considering a USB> SATA enclosure costs about $10.

I’m sure the LaCie is obviously of higher quality with its enclosure but I’m struggling to justify such a high price tag.
 
Populus said:
Maybe this form factor is to better dissipate the heat.
I read somewhere that T5 had some heat issues.

By the way, I assume this are not Thunderbolt 3 drives, just USB 3.1 gen2, right?
Click to expand...


No issues with T3/T5 drives. I use them to clone and large file back ups.

Yes there is no need for TB3 on these drives. They are SATA3 in a USB enclosure.
[doublepost=1541538119][/doublepost]
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
LaCie drives are GARBAGE. Highest rate of failure on the entire market. Don't buy one unless you like throwing money away on data recovery (and with current tech it's very unlikely).
Click to expand...

Yes, I have had so many LaCie failures in the last 15 years.
 
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az431 said:
LaCie does not manufacture the drives that are inside its LaCie-branded enclosures. They are generally Seagate drives.
Click to expand...

They have their own firmware which is garbage and causes failure issues. This perspiratory firmware they use makes recovery even more difficult.

That's always been their issue, even with spinning drives. They used standard hard drives but used their own bridgesets in the hard drives. For instance, with FireWire drives they used their own garbage rather than one darn near industry standard like the Oxford 911 or 912 that nearly every other FireWire drive utilized.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
LaCie drives are GARBAGE. Highest rate of failure on the entire market. Don't buy one unless you like throwing money away on data recovery (and with current tech it's very unlikely).
Click to expand...

Damn! I use the LaCie Porsche Design as TimeMachine backups for the last 5 years and i've found them to be 100% perfect in every way! Different folks, different strokes I guess!
 
BODYBUILDERPAUL said:
Damn! I use the LaCie Porsche Design as TimeMachine backups for the last 5 years and i've found them to be 100% perfect in every way! Different folks, different strokes I guess!
Click to expand...

I had 2 of those: both failed within first 1 year. Gave up. Got a WD and it’s been happily chugging along for 6 years. I’d get a backup drive for your backup drive if I were you
 
I'm not getting the pricing, maybe that is the suggested retail and gets discounted 60%. Here is a Samsung x5 which has Mac internal speeds, and a thunderbolt 3 connection for $699 (doesn't make apple's pricing look so bad for those fast drives). https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...tate-drives/portable-ssd-x5-1tb-mu-pb1t0b-am/

I was always under the impression that you used fast internal SSD drives for daily workflows, and archived to slower HDD drives. I'm not seeing the need for super fast external SSDs, except for device portability avoiding a copy perhaps. But there are probably many who would find exception to that. Each to their own
[doublepost=1541544860][/doublepost]Interesting, the article quotes the wrong prices:

https://www.lacie.com/products/portable-ssd/

500 = $125
1 TB = $170
2 TB = $540

Maybe they change daily, Will probably be on sale for a lot less
 
MauiPa said:
I'm not getting the pricing, maybe that is the suggested retail and gets discounted 60%. Here is a Samsung x5 which has Mac internal speeds, and a thunderbolt 3 connection for $699 (doesn't make apple's pricing look so bad for those fast drives). https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...tate-drives/portable-ssd-x5-1tb-mu-pb1t0b-am/

I was always under the impression that you used fast internal SSD drives for daily workflows, and archived to slower HDD drives. I'm not seeing the need for super fast external SSDs, except for device portability avoiding a copy perhaps. But there are probably many who would find exception to that. Each to their own
[doublepost=1541544860][/doublepost]Interesting, the article quotes the wrong prices:

https://www.lacie.com/products/portable-ssd/

500 = $125
1 TB = $170
2 TB = $540

Maybe they change daily, Will probably be on sale for a lot less
Click to expand...

Sorry about that, the pricing LaCie provided to me was different than what's listed on the site. I've updated the article to reflect the site pricing, which is $125 for 500GB, $270 for 1TB, and $540 for 2TB.
 
Or you can get the Samsung T5 Portable SSD on Amazon for around $400 for a 2TB drive, less for lower capacity drives and has similar read and write speeds, but is also physically smaller.
 
twistedpixel8 said:
I had 2 of those: both failed within first 1 year. Gave up. Got a WD and it’s been happily chugging along for 6 years. I’d get a backup drive for your backup drive if I were you
Click to expand...

I had terrible luck with WD (even running their red series which despite having large capacities and being advertised for use in NAS have bad URE rates).

My primary time machine backups go to a NAS with RAID 6 and Seagate IronWolf Pro drives. My secondary time machine backups go to porsche design usb-c drives direct attached. Everything off site too of course but I've had single time machine backups fail before so I have two going all the time and the little porsche design drives are cheap and unobtrusive. I haven't had one of those fail yet.

In any case, all manufacturers can produce a bad drive and I'm sure someone's had a bad experience with everything. For a less critical scenario like my secondary time machine backups I'm not as picky. For my primary backups I made sure I picked drives with a low unrecoverable error rate. For the drives I run in my NAS that's 1:10^15 which is pretty great for a spinning drive. If you're running large spinning disks in RAID, first off abandon RAID 5 (if you ever ran it) and go with RAID 10 or RAID 6 (or higher) and secondly make sure you choose drives with 1:10^15 URE. RAID 5 or 1:10^14 and there's a significant likelihood you'll have a failure while trying to recover from a dead drive thus losing the entire array. No one wants to go from losing one drive to losing the entire volume.
 
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