LaCie’s new Rugged SSD 500 Gb features a compact rubberized casing with shock and moisture resistance, as well as a super-fast NVMe interface that delivers data transfer speeds of up to 1000 MB / s. Is it realistic to get them in practice? Yes, but on one condition.
Modern portable drives get high speeds thanks to the use of SSD media. The new LaCie brand that we tested, the Rugged SSD 500 Gb, combines two high-speed data transfer technologies at once – the SSD itself with the NVMe bus and the USB Type-C port. This adds up to performance comparable to PCI Express, but only when connected via a USB 3.1 Type-C port (known as USB 3.1 Gen 2 or USB 3.2 Gen 2). This interface is also Thunderbolt 3 compatible.
Our test PC is not equipped with such a port, so we conducted our tests by connecting this portable drive to a regular USB 3.0 port. Conveniently, the manufacturer supplies both cables in the kit, thereby not limiting the user in the interfaces. Although, it should be noted that this, alas, already outdated connector does not allow the drive to expand to its full potential. But even with such a connection, the performance of the media is not inferior to the speed of SATA. We will tell you about the test measurements below, but for now we will consider the appearance of the device, material and design features.
Appearance: material and design features
The new version of the Rugged SSD is comparable in height and width to two matchboxes, while the case is completely protected by a thick rubber shell. Such protection, as the manufacturer notes, provides the wearer not only with the degree of protection according to the IP67 standard, i.e. prevents dust and water from getting inside, but good impact resistance, in case you drop it from a height of about 3 m. Its design is also capable of withstanding the crushing of a load of up to two tons, which is difficult to imagine in real life.
Perhaps the disc will withstand even more serious tests, because an SSD is installed here, in which there are no moving elements, which means that it is not afraid of overloading. On the net you can even find tests by immersing the device in water, but we did not dare to do such an experiment, because The USB-C port does not have a plug here, i.e.
Otherwise, the Rugged SSD gives the impression of a sturdy and attractive design (including a bright orange color) device. It is noteworthy that even in the design of the disk, which is so closed on all sides by the bumper, there was a place for the LED indicator of the data transfer status – to the left of the USB 3.1 connector.
Performance and reliability
The Rugged SSD can connect to your computer through two different interfaces, which dictate the transfer rate. On our test computer, we used a USB Type-C cable with a standard USB 3.0 plug. It is worth considering one more point, namely, from which disk in the computer will be copied to this external SSD. For the purity of the experiment, we carried out two tests: one with data transfer from a typical HDD (spindle speed 5200), and the second with an internal SSD. Below we demonstrate the speed of copying video files with 2.7K resolution and 3.9GB each.
Synthetic performance tests were carried out using popular benchmarks. So, Crystal DiskMark demonstrated a data read speed of more than 417 MB / s, and a slightly lower write speed – 413 MB / s. In another benchmark ATTO Disk Benchmark in similar measurements, the results were significantly higher: 454 MB / s for reading and 447 MB / s for writing. Impressive! After all, exactly the same speeds are provided by modern SSDs connected to a PC via a SATA interface.
Another popular benchmark AS SSD made it possible to measure not only the read and write speed: 412 and 411 MB / s, respectively, but also the data access time: for writing – 0.146 s, for reading – 0.187 s. Considering that this is removable media, the results are excellent.
During the tests, the disc warmed up a little – to about 38-40 ° C. The Crystal Disc Info test program at the beginning of the test showed a temperature from the built-in sensor of 33 ° C.
Supplied backup software
On the disk, the manufacturer placed a program for registering a user on the LaCie service and downloading the backup utility – LaCie Toolkit . This is a compact set of tools that allows you to perform backups from PC to external media in automatic mode. If necessary, you can use it to do data recovery. In addition, this utility provides a mode for mirroring files from a selected folder on a PC to an SSD drive. Everything is quite simple here, but note that there are no fine settings in this software.
It should be emphasized that the disk was originally formatted with the exFAT file system, which, in theory, should be supported by mobile devices, in particular smartphones. However, devices on Android for some reason do not transfer it and require formatting the disk in Fat32. If you intend to backup photos and videos from your mobile, then follow this operation and you will have a giant portable storage at your fingertips. However, in this case, the size of a single file copied to disk must be less than 4 GB.
Conclusion
The LaCie Rugged SSD 500 Gb Portable SSD offers fast data transfer speeds and good shock, water and dust resistance. Attractive case design and compact size allow you to always have it with you, for example, for backing up data from a PC and copying footage from portable equipment – action and professional photo and video cameras.
High speed, and most importantly – its stability, guarantees minimal loss of time for file transfer. In addition to the backup functions, this medium also makes it possible to work with files directly from an external drive, which is convenient when there is no time to copy large volumes.