LaCie 1TB Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series Hard Drive

Reviews for LaCie 1TB Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series Hard Drive

Customer Reviews and Ratings

3.5 out of 5 stars

Based on 55 reviews

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Broke within 1 month, all data lost

    • Written by from Boone

    After one month of good, fast, performance the drive stopped showing up on my computer whenever I would plug it in. After speaking with tech support it was determined that it was a hardware problem and, still being under warranty, they said I could get it fixed for free.

    However, I was informed that to get any information off of the drive I would have to contact a company called d2Recovery (or someone similarly qualified) who solemnly informed me that the service would be $400 or $1000 depending on what was wrong with the drive.

    Waste of money, I'll be asking for a refund and will go with a more reliable company and a more reliable product. If you do go with this company be sure to pay more money for a backup service. Though this is a "rugged" drive it spent all of its time in a computer bag, never had the change to utilize its supposed ruggedness.

    I'll be more cautious purchasing any more hardware tacitly endorsed by Apple in the future.

    Disappointed is an understatement here.

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Rugged and Reliable

    • Written by

    I do a lot of travelling so this drive was the logical choice for me. After 3 trips, I am yet to have any problems due to how sturdy the exterior casing is. I can quickly and easily access not only any files that I have backed up to it, but it's also a good way to backup my photos from my camera.

    1 of 1 people found this useful

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  • 2.0 out of 5 stars

    Loose Thunderbolt

    • Written by from BRADFORD

    Every time the drive moves it goes off and I get iOS warning of eject hard drive before removing it. Worked great for 2 months. The cable seems loose.

    1 of 2 people found this useful

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  • 2.0 out of 5 stars

    Take extreme care with the USB 3.0 port!

    • Written by from Scottsdale

    Take care when inserting the USB 3.0 cable into this drive., there is very little internal support for the USB 3 connection. Stick to the Thunderbolt port. Now have to see if they have a thunderbolt/usb adapter so don't have to replace the drive. Design should have been better.

    5 of 8 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Sturdy, fast, reliable

    • Written by

    This drive does its job well. It was easy to setup. No software installation needed. It has a nice solid design, and it matches well with my iMac. It needs only one cable to charge. The speeds are excellent. I use it mainly with the Thunderbolt interface, and it hasn't given me any trouble in more than four months now.

    4 of 5 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    **** GREAT DRIVE...TESTED 30 OF THEM!!! ****

    • Written by from Thunder Bay

    I teach at a Canadian college in Northern Ontario and we purchased 30 of these for our 1st year students. The USB 3.0 port broke on 2 of them, so be careful not to force the connector in the wrong way. The Thunderbolt is very durable and has not broken on any of the devices. I have used mine since January of 2013 and I cannot believe the speed and reliability. My own test shows 6 Gigs being transfered in 55 seconds on both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0. Test repeated 20 times. Great value...buy this disk!

    9 of 9 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Works Great

    • Written by

    So far so good. The drive works just as expected. It's pretty much plug and play and very fast with USB3. It's the perfect size to easily slide into the bag I'm taking with me wherever I go. 1TB holds all of my work files and backups. All in all, it's been good to me and I'd definitely recommend it.

    8 of 9 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    IM IN LOVE WITH THIS DRIVE!!!!

    • Written by from Philadelphia

    I JUST PICKED THIS DRIVE UP TODAY.. AND I AM IMPRESSED WITH THE TRANSFER SPEED ON THIS THING... WITH THUNDERBOLT.. I NEVER GOT TO USE THE THUNDERBOLT PORT UNTIL NOW.. IM SOO GLAD I GOT THIS DRIVE I READ ALOT OF GOOD REVIEWS ON IT.. AND I LOVE THE RUGGED DESIGN OF IT ALSO... THE DRIVE DOES GET HOT.. BUT IT DOESNT SLOW DOWN ANY OF THE TRANSFER SPEEDS AT ALL.. :)

    10 of 10 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    USB 3.0 Port Broken

    • Written by from Oakland

    I've had this hard drive for about 4 months now and the USB 3.0 Jack on the hard drive shell became very loose. I have used this hard drive at work in a very controlled environment the fact that it broke so quickly is very disappointing. It seems this hard drive was not put through any type of rugged testing before actually mass producing and selling for an overpriced case. Please consider another RUGGED product before this one.

    4 of 10 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    not that rugged

    • Written by from Vancouver

    This hard drive worked just fine, for the year and a half that it sat on my desk, or was transported in my work bag. But, it recently fell *two feet* off of the hotel bed, where i was working, onto the floor. Now it's making horrible grinding sounds and i cant get any of the data that's on it off. Not rugged at all. I'd say if you just plan on moving this around in a safe and cushy computer bag, then it's fine.... but dont expect it to survive a very small fall.

    14 of 25 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Great Rugged Design. Great Performance.

    • Written by

    I have absolutely no complaints about this drive. It has suited my needs very well so far. What I love the most about it are the fast transfer speeds and the rugged design. It's nice to know that this drive is able to take the knocks that come with daily life, and I don't have to gingerly place it in my bag every time I leave my office. I've been using it for more than five months now.

    9 of 13 people found this useful

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  • 2.0 out of 5 stars

    Thunderbolt cable dead

    • Written by from Ottawa

    Hi,
    Like many on here, I have suffered a dead Thunderbolt cable.

    Using this drive with the provided Thunderbolt cable, I ran into issues. At first I thought the drive was too hot and I let it cool down before trying it again. Nothing. The drive didn't spin up nor did the light come on.

    Today I was able to try the USB3.0 connector and that worked fine. So I gave the Thunderbolt cable another try... nothing.

    I took another Thunderbolt cable from my single other device with Thunderbolt and that worked! Never have I ever seen a cable being the source of issues. I was certain that the drive was flakey or that the issues were related to the iMac Im using this with.

    You would think with an expensive cable such as a TB cable you would have better quality control. I'm very disappointed with this.

    Come on LaCie, WTH??

    I have to say that the speed of TB when this was working was amazing. Working with large files is so easy and unreal. I *was* loving it.

    11 of 13 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Fast, Portable, Rugged

    • Written by

    Excellent product. Rugged, fast, easy to setup and use. Needs no external power, powered by usb connection. I use it for on the go backups with my Macbook Pro. It comes with optional software for backups and security. I would recommend this product.

    11 of 12 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    USB 3.0 slot broke in less than 6 months

    • Written by from Stockholm

    No stars at all!

    This product is not rugged at all. In less than 6 months, the USB 3.0 slot broke and I hardly used it as I utilised the Thunderbolt more.

    Also I heard that the La Cie Customer Service is horrible. I am now thinking if I should bother with the supposed 2 Year Warranty for a replacement.

    I am now hoping that the Thunderbolt does not break down as well!

    5 of 11 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Not "Rugged" at all

    • Written by from San Francisco

    I have a dozen Lacie drives(nine of them are older "Rugged" models). I've never had a problem, though I know colleagues who have. I bought the 1TB Thunderbolt Series and was pretty happy with it until it took a short and not-very-hard fall off my coffee table. The impact was much less than some of the drops that have occurred with my other drives. But this one died. As far as I'm concerned they advertise this model as being something it is not. The worst part, however, is dealing with Lacie's support. They couldn't care less and seem more interested in forcing you to use their overpriced data recovery service by implying that if you don't they might not honor the warranty. I think I'm done with Lacie.

    9 of 13 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Apparently all terabytes are not created equal

    • Written by from Colorado Springs

    I purchased from Apple retail store. The box clearly says 1TB,. Yet no matter how I format it, I only find only 700MB on this disk. In comparison, all my other external drives (none LaCie) are accurate on the same machine. I returned this item and bought another brand.

    5 of 14 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Didn't work

    • Written by from GLENFORD

    Didn't work for me at all. Sent it back. Seems it worked for others. Vanished from desktop. Couldn't handle transferring files. I couldn't do anything with it.

    Also, I found it very ugly. The orange color is pretty nasty however the bumper can be peeled off quite easily.

    1 of 9 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Excellent for portable backup

    • Written by

    I got one of these for my video projects, and it works as advertised. It's very quiet, doesn't require a separate power supply, and transfers files really fast. I'm using it with my MacBook Pro and Time Machine, and I haven't had a single issue in the four months I've owned it. I liked this drive very much, and would recommend to others without hesitation.

    4 of 5 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    I needed a portable, large capacity drive that would work with my Macs/PCs

    • Written by from Beaverton

    For transferring files between Macs and PCs I needed a drive that would let me go from Mac to PC and back without spending a lot of money. For maximum speed, I could have gone with the SSD version of this drive, but I wanted capacity.

    For older Macs, the drive connects via USB 2.0, and I am seeing about 30MB/sec thruput. I see similar speeds with Windows PCs using USB 2.0, too.

    Some of the newer Windows PCs I encounter have USB 3.0 ports, but I see speeds ranging from 30MB/sec up to 100MB/sec with this drive. I guess performance depends on the implementation of the USB 3.0 interface in some of those PCs.

    On the Mac side, there are some Macs that provide USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt ports, I like the flexibility that the faster Thunderbolt port provides, as I consistantly experience 100+MB/sec performance; definiitely faster than what USB 2.0 provides. On the newer Macs that have both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt, I am seeing the same performance on both ports.

    I like the drive since I only need a cable and the drive. No need to lug around a power supply. It is a great general purpose drive that addresses my need to copy files to all the Windows and OS X computers I encounter. Just need to make sure the drive is formatted as FAT32 for this kind of application, since that is the only format that both operating systems will reliably read/write files without special driver software.

    There is a great app from Mediafour, MacDrive which permits read/write access to Mac formatted drives, but that is software one would need to purchase.

    When I need the speed, I am happy with the SSD version of this drive. No complaints with its nearly 400MB/sec performance. I'm only limited space - 120GB or 256GB.

    6 of 7 people found this useful

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  • 2.0 out of 5 stars

    Embarrassment to Thunderbolt

    • Written by from Jamaica Plain

    I have been using LaCie's Rugged drives for offloading fat video files in the field for a few years now. I have several 1TB Firewire 800 drives and while they have worked well, they are pretty slow for large amounts of data. We typically shoot Sony XDCam on SxS cards, none of which is bigger than 32 gig. I have pined for a drive that could take hold of that awesome Thunderbolt, (I have two Promise Pegasus R6 12TB drive enclosures set to RAID5) and really scream. When I have looked at this drive in the store and online, I couldn't understand why LaCie limited the rpm to just 5400. "Oh well, they must know what they are doing," I thought. So I bought one. MISTAKE. It says on the box speeds of up to 10 G/bs. RIGHT....NOOOOOO. The Blackmagic Speed Disk Test maxed out at just 110 MB/s. REALLY? This thing is going back.

    3 of 6 people found this useful

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