LaCie Rugged Pro SSD Thunderbolt3 External SSD, 4TB

CCL were selling this excellent little drive at about 2/3 of what most people were charging.Way faster and more reliable than the 2 Sandisk ExtremePro drives I had to return to a different seller. Pity they weren't selling a alrger capacity one at the same discount, but a great little drive.Needs to be reformatted as AFPS for max performance with Mac.

Avoid.

SSD manufacturers are notorious for exaggerating their speeds. They use confusing and overlapping terms to mask the fact they use older/lower quality components in their units. For an SSD priced over a grand I was really hoping I would get something that follow through on it's promises.Reached out to LaCie after the first tests and they recommended I return it and get a new one. Tests on the replacement were the same.Tested it on a 2020 Macbook M1 and a high end Macbook M1 Pro. Similar results both times. Write speeds were consistently around half of what's advertised. Transfer speeds were around 20% less too.I'll always buy from BH and recommend every do the same, I just wouldn't recommend buying this SSD.

Drive no longer works

I used the drive to work on my photo and video projects on the fly. It's been less than a year and now the drive no longer connects to my computer. After many attempts to reconnect I get the message saying the drive was disconnected improperly. I'm unable to recover the files since it won't connect.

Excellent External Drive

A snap to set up, good accompanying software, and extremely fast transfer of huge files from my laptop. Synchronizing and backup software is included and, of course, a (short) Thunderbolt cable. Fortunately, I haven't had to test the drive's ruggedization, but the claimed specs are very impressive. Of course, if you don't have a Thunderbolt port, you probably don't want to spend the extra money on this drive.

Excellent SSD

Excellent external SSD that is fast, has a reasonable amount of storage, and has contemporary connection (USB-C or Thunderbolt). It is rugged and has very fast read and write speeds. It is also very very light. The small size makes it even more attractive to resolve an SSD need as one can easily store the SSD after backing up data at a safe place.As some people have already mentioned the connection cable included in the package is really short so one may have to get a longer cable if a short cable does not address your needs.I transferred data from an old WD my book that was bought in 2014 and back then it was a one or two year old model. So it didn't have fast transfer speeds and the whole data transfer took a long time but I am noticing the LaCie SSD is ... MoreExcellent external SSD that is fast, has a reasonable amount of storage, and has contemporary connection (USB-C or Thunderbolt). It is rugged and has very fast read and write speeds. It is also very very light. The small size makes it even more attractive to resolve an SSD need as one can easily store the SSD after backing up data at a safe place.As some people have already mentioned the connection cable included in the package is really short so one may have to get a longer cable if a short cable does not address your needs.I transferred data from an old WD my book that was bought in 2014 and back then it was a one or two year old model. So it didn't have fast transfer speeds and the whole data transfer took a long time but I am noticing the LaCie SSD is seriously fast with its lightning read and write speeds.

Expensive but performs as expected

I loaded my LaCie 4TB Rugged SSD PRO with 2TB of data. Ran Blackmagic speed test and the results were still great.Write speeds: 1900 MB/s to 2000 MB/sRead speeds ranged quite a bit more than the write speeds: lowest of 1400 MB/s to highs of 2400 MB/s.I've had the smaller LaCie 2TB Rugged SSD Pro and even when it was almost full - the speeds were still really great.I'm using this LaCie 4TB on a 2021 MacBook Pro M1 Pro with 32GB RAM and 4TB internal drive.

Fast, compact, durable, backwards compatible + slick design

I will be using this hard drive for my main working disc for photo and video editing between three computers and an iPad. It's been perfect so far. No complaints whatsoever. Sure it would be nice if it didn't cost a buck, but it's definitely a better value than the 2 TB offering and faster than anything that I've seen in this price range.SanDisk has some offerings worth considering if you don't need this much speed, but I do want to point out that both companies include 5 year warranties on most of their professional drives, and Lacie/ Seagate includes 5 years of date recovery too. My other issue with the best bus-powered SanDisk drive currently is that is that my Macs won't support 20 Gbps bandwidth via USB-C. Only 10... so you're paying for extra performance ... MoreI will be using this hard drive for my main working disc for photo and video editing between three computers and an iPad. It's been perfect so far. No complaints whatsoever. Sure it would be nice if it didn't cost a buck, but it's definitely a better value than the 2 TB offering and faster than anything that I've seen in this price range.SanDisk has some offerings worth considering if you don't need this much speed, but I do want to point out that both companies include 5 year warranties on most of their professional drives, and Lacie/ Seagate includes 5 years of date recovery too. My other issue with the best bus-powered SanDisk drive currently is that is that my Macs won't support 20 Gbps bandwidth via USB-C. Only 10... so you're paying for extra performance that you can't use if you're machine doesn't support the latest USB (not Thunderbolt 3/4).

This is the one!

The reason to get this drive is that you have a laptop with Thunderbolt ports, and you want external storage that is as fast as your internal SSD. When you are working on large audio or video projects, you are using the drive at high throughputs for extended periods of time, and a lot of the external drives will overheat and corrupt. Not this one though. This one barely gets warm even when you are driving it hard, and it is as fast as it is rated! I highly recommend it!

Thunderous applause!

I just setup a 64TB disk array with thunderbolt 3 connection and it is half as fast as this little powerhouse! I should have purchased more of these instead. It is amazing how fast the SSD drive in this tiny LaCie Rugged 2TB SSD Pro really is. I can edit anywhere now on my 16 MacBook Pro M1 Max laptop. 4K video plays back beautifully. I'm using the 64TB array now to sync with this as a backup. :) LaCie SSD Pro Thunderbolt 3 Rugged Rocks!

Unbelievably fast and compact

For several years I have been using the small Samsung USB-C external drives (almost credit-card sized) -- I used two 500GB and one 1TB drives along with Carbon Copy Cloner and my MacBook Air.That worked well (although the 1TB became corrupted and unusable about 3 months ago) and I would especially back up the drive before any flight and separate the drive from my laptop at TSA.I just upgraded to a (wonderful!) MacBook Pro 14 and attempted a Migration Assistant transfer from the Air using a fresh Samsung backup. I let it run for about 8 hours and it never got past the first Looking for applications and documents... stage.To cut to the chase: I thus ordered this 500GB LaCie drive and did a fresh CCC backup from the MB Air. It took 7 minutes to backup 400GB of ... MoreFor several years I have been using the small Samsung USB-C external drives (almost credit-card sized) -- I used two 500GB and one 1TB drives along with Carbon Copy Cloner and my MacBook Air.That worked well (although the 1TB became corrupted and unusable about 3 months ago) and I would especially back up the drive before any flight and separate the drive from my laptop at TSA.I just upgraded to a (wonderful!) MacBook Pro 14 and attempted a Migration Assistant transfer from the Air using a fresh Samsung backup. I let it run for about 8 hours and it never got past the first Looking for applications and documents... stage.To cut to the chase: I thus ordered this 500GB LaCie drive and did a fresh CCC backup from the MB Air. It took 7 minutes to backup 400GB of data! Using the Samsung with USB-C it would take 13 mins for ~22GB. (See screenshot of CCC logs.)I hooked the LaCie up to the MB Pro and started Migration Assistant. The whole process took ~15 minutes. Previously it would take hours.Sorry for rambling on.TLDR; A wicked fast external drive worth every penny. And Thunderbolt makes a huge difference!