LaCie Rugged Portable Hard Drive - STFR2000800 product reviews

Having migrated from a desktop to a chop'n'change laptop-based workflow, switching to a portable storage system that can act as a fixed-base file server as well as a working drive on the go was a necessity. But most compact portable drives suffer from minimal protection against being dropped, which is far more likely for them than say a desktop rig. It always struck me as short-sighted to design a portable drive that still has almost no tolerance for impacts, but has no protection built into the design. I was delighted to see this drive arrive because it not only gave me a good idea of what is now available but arrived just in time for me to try it on a working trip out of town for 3 days.

After doing all the little things needed to clone the master work drive onto this baby, I turned off the power to the big desktop drive and let this take over the strain. It worked wonderfully - it turned out to be about 9% faster to use than the big desktop backup drive too, which really surprised me. I would have chalked it up to the increased throughput available with USB 3.0 and the type-C plug... but the hub that I had to plug it into so the whole network had access was only running under USB 2.0, so that extra bandwidth was not utilised... this meant the speed increase was directly attributable to the drive itself.

After giving it a go on the road and having it attached directly to the laptop's USB 3.0 port, I could see how much speed there really was. It was so quick and smooth to do file read/writes, it felt like it was almost instantaneous compared to using the desktop drive. This prompted me to upgrade the network infrastructure to full USB 3.0 and gigabit switches. That's when the drive really showed it's true strength. Despite being constantly accessed by three PCs throughout the working day - one of which is doing hourly backup reads off it - the drive powered on without a hitch.

The rubberised case has a good grip to it, meaning that if you bump the table, the drive won't skitter away and fall. That said, even if it does, the drop from an average table to sit at won't phase it a bit. I did the drop-test 5 times, and the drive was still fully operational. The cable is also sturdy and well designed, it fits into the drive snugly so that it won't wiggle itself loose if you leave it attached while you walk the drive to a new location.

Overall, a very tidy unit, well placed in the market currently and worth the coins. I was impressed enough that I plan to go out and buy one shortly. It is exactly the drive I need behind a more portable work kit - durable, reliable, affordable and practical.