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

I needed a reliable portable solution to backup my work files, and this drive fit the bill perfectly. The data is encrypted, so it's doubly secure and there's also access to the secure cloud storage. The performance has been very good so I haven't experienced any issues with this drive at all, and it's been a bit more than a month.

17 of 20 people found this useful

I have loved this back up since day one. All you do is plug it in and it will do the rest for you! 1TB was definitely the way to go. Plus, it is basically indestructible which is perfect for a college student like me. Definitely a great investment!

16 of 19 people found this useful

I purchased this drive last week from Apple for the sole intention of using on an upcoming job.
Thunderbolt speeds were the deciding factor in buying this drive. I use a Promise Pegasus RAID already and I love it.
I had to edit (FCPX) a fast turnaround video of the days events so far by midday on day 1. It seemed to hold up okay to this task. Import of the short XDCAM clips worked fine. Although I was not blown away by how fast it was.
I noticed the like other users, that the connectors were getting very hot.

Most of day 2 was spent filming long seminars. About 40 mins each.
End of the day arrives and the plan is to dump all the the footage from the SXS cards onto this drive and then copy onto another hard drive that my client has provided so he can take it back to the US with him.
I set up my MBP, started the transfer and walked away for 10 mins. When I returned, my MBP was in sleep mode. Strange... I tried to wake it but to no avail.

Panic sets in. My MBP is DEAD! We had a MacPro with us on the stand. So I whip out the card reader and my Lacie Rugged 1TB (with thunderbolt) and kick the sales guys off the MacPro.
I start the transfer process again. 10 minutes in, I receive a warning message telling me there 'might not be enough free space left on the drive'. Okay... There is no way I have used 1TB this is XDCAM HD. Not 4K.
There was 800+ GB available. At this point, the penny dropped. ITS THE DRIVE not the MBP (I had been using my Apple TB cable too).

Im pretty sure its not the cable like other users have reported. I can't pinpoint the problem. It might be to do with the speed of the drive inside. But seriously, what is the point of putting a slow drive in a Thunderbolt enclosure?
I'll shut up now. Its not a great experience that I have had with this drive and I will think twice about buying Lacie again. From the outside, it seems like a cracking product. On the inside it is massively flawed.

My MBP lives to fight another day by the way.

22 of 33 people found this useful

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

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

This little drive definitely packs a punch. It's very solid, has got more than enough storage capacity for my needs and I'm still amazed even today at how much faster the USB 3.0 is compared to my old unit. Now I don't have to sit around and wait half an hour for my work to copy over. Nifty all around!

10 of 11 people found this useful

So my thunderbolt cable stopped working after a full day. I'm using the USB cable now & it's working fine & is a lot cooler than when I was using thunderbolt (the drive itself).

It makes me feel really iffy using thunderbolt which is a shame because I bought it specifically for that as every other port on my macbook is occupied.

The option to daisy chain would've been nice too.

15 of 22 people found this useful

The price ($249) to pay for this Thunderbolt hard drive was perfect for me. I bought it quickly, and picked it up at an Apple Store.

After bringing it home and connecting to my MacBook Air, I was impressed by it's durable exterior protection system. It gave me confidence knowing that I could travel freely w/ this hard drive, without fear of data loss.

Was I wrong.

After initially transferring some videos, documents, and other media, the hard drive stopped working completely. It just disappeared from Finder, despite reconnecting several times. It didn't even show up in Disk Utility. After several times of trying, it finally showed up after I reversed the cable connection (very peculiar).

Even then, after 15-20 min., the drive disappeared from Finder again. After reconnecting several times, I received a message saying "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". I couldn't even repair the disk using Disk Utility, and was extremely thankful that I didn't format my original hard drive from which I copied the data from.

In all, I am definitely returning this product, will profusely complain directly to LaCie, and strongly recommend you stay way from this product, if you value your data.

27 of 47 people found this useful

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

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