Lacie Rugged All-Terrain-120GB

Hard drive is a fragile component and hence is not preferred over flash drives by some people.Lacie has come to the rescue with a rugged all-terrain external hard drive which can stand shocks and hence makes a good companion without you having to worry about its handling.The drive supports triple interface too.

First some of its specifications:

• Dimensions: 3.5″ x 5.7″ x 1″
• Interface: USB 2.0/Firewire 400/Firewire 800
• Spindle speed: 5400 rpm
• Transfer rate: 800 mbps
• Buffer size: 8 MB
• OS compatibility : OS X , Windows , Linux
• Warranty: 3 Years

The drive has a layer of orange color rubber covering on it which gives it extra protection.The drive covering has been made from scratch proof aluminum.The design on the drive is simple yet elegant.Lacie claims that the drive will not sustain any damage if it falls from a height less than 35 inches which comes out approximately to about 3 feet which is roughly the height of a table.The drive comes in two versions.One which has only USB 2.0 interface and other which has additonal triple interface along with Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 interfaces.

Triple interface is handy if you have a firewire port on your PC and it can help you extract the maximum out of the hard disk.The drive is USB powered and does not need any AC adapter to go about doing its task.Also if the drive is not able to draw enough power from one USB port you can connect another cable to the power port provided on the hard drive.This is a boon for old PC users which have limited USB power.

The performance is very good and among some of the best in its category.The drive managed to give an average speed on 16 MB/second while writing data on the disk using the firewire 400 interface.The drive’s write speed managed to climb to 20MB/second when tested using the Firewire 800 interface, an improvement of a neat 25 per cent! The read tests slated the read speeds at 19MB/second and 22MB/second using Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 interfaces respectively. Hence Lacie hard drive managed to pass the tests with flying colors.

Pros:

• Ruggedly built
• Shock proof
• Slim
• Triple interface
• Good performance

Cons:

• Expensive

Final Thoughts

The Lacie rugged all-terrain hard drive is perfect at the job that has been assigned to it! The drive is shock-proof,its body is scratch proof which makes sure it will survive rough handling.The drive is slim with its height measuring only an inch.The inclusion of triple interface makes sure that the drive performs fast and it surely does. All in all the Lacie hard drive has just about everything going about it and is a perfect buy if you need a rugged portable hard drive and have the cash to spend.