Everyone is on the lookout for a good deal on external storage drives, mostly to get a good bargain on these devices in online sales, which otherwise cost a lot. There are usually two types of storage drives. One is the regular hard disk drive (HDD), which is bigger in size and carries fatter drive discs inside it.
The other is a solid state drive (SSD) which is compact in its dimensions, and the resulting speeds are quicker than what you get with HDD with fewer moving parts. But generally, people go for a HDD because it’s affordable compared to the SSDs.
Now there is a third kind of drive, which claims to be rugged and can withstand a fair amount of rough handling and abuse.
These are costlier than HDDs and almost at a par with the SSDs, but their data speeds are closer to what you get with the traditional hard disk drives. So, why do they cost so much in the first place and how rugged are they? We test out one such drive, from Lacie.
Lacie is owned by Seagate, one of the popular brands in the physical storage space globally. This brand has been there in the market for a long time, but only now is it officially being launched in India.
The Lacie drive has been made rugged with the addition of a rubberised orange sleeve that can be taken off. The drive is compact and weighs 224 grams, which comes down to 166 grams after the sleeve is removed.
With the sleeve on, the drive can withstand drops up to 1.2m. That's not all, Lacie claims that the drive works even after a 1-tonne vehicle runs over it. Obvious to say that while the drive survived multiple drop tests, we didn't have the heart to put it through the 1-tonne car challenge.
The drive is rugged, it can handle multiple drops with ease but it's not waterproof (not that you need it to be). It has two 1TB drives as small as 7mm each, which are encased inside the drive and supports USB Type C for data transfer.
The company claims data can be transferred at 135MB/sec and we decided to test those numbers ourself.
What The Numbers Say
Turns out, the drive is quick to make the data move from one place to another. To ascertain that, we tried out multiple storage drive benchmark apps like CrystalDiskMark and HD Tune. With the former, the Lacie drive gave us read and write speeds of 132MB/sec and 129MB/sec respectively.
It’s close to what Lacie claims and quick enough for a 2TB drive, but for its price tag of Rs 16,499 there are others on the list with faster speeds. Interestingly, with HD Tune, the drive clocked a maximum speed of 141MB/sec, with an average speed of 97.7MB/sec registered.
Once we got done with the technical world of testing, we selected a slew of data files, including videos to transfer from the drive to a laptop running an SSD. We got a speed of 130MB/sec to transfer 2.90GB of data with an average speed of 121MB/sec.
Now, it was time to test the mettle of Lacie for being a rugged drive. We dropped it from permissible heights with a mixed set of force and even after that, the drive worked flawlessly (without any major damage to report). It is worth noting that even while the drive is in use, you don’t really hear any sound coming from it, which is a good thing.
Worth Going For?
So, is the extra couple of grand worth spending on this rugged drive? It’s safe to say this 2TB drive from Lacie lives up to its rugged tag and is decent enough with its data transfer speeds. Having said that, the drive’s rugged nature comes to nought once you remove the sleeve. So that extra cash is technically just for the rubber sleeve.
At a Rs 16,499 price point, this drive caters to a very specific set of users, who are prone to having mishaps in his/her workspace. For more careful regular users it is not worth spending this much on a drive. You can get other 2TB drives for much less. If you can splurge on a drive, pick an SSD over this, as they are more durable.
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