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If your computer has a Thunderbolt drive, odds are it’s been pretty neglected. Some external storage options are good, but nothing is a no-brainer. Until now, that is. LaCie’s vivid orange drive is the best way to back up files, superfast.
A £170 SSD hard drive that connects via supremely-quick Thunderbolt or USB 3.0.
Anyone who needs to back up data, and wants to do it quickly. So, almost everyone.
Lovely and modern. Most bright orange things aren’t appealing, except for candy corn, but this cold-metal-meets-cartoon-bumper look totally works.
Connect the drive to your computer via Thunderbolt or USB 3.0. It’ll mount, like any other external hard drive.
No need for any external power.
It’s still significantly more expensive than traditional HD storage.
Does a drive with zero movable parts need to be ruggedised?
- Shockingly, the LaCie drive actually lived up to its advertised speeds: 376 MB/sec read, 196 MB/sec write. That’s really, really fast. Fast enough to back up entire music albums instantly, and probably enough speed to handle your entire backup catalogue in a few minutes.
- It comes with a Thunderbolt cable.
- It’s light and the ports are entirely accessible.
- Given how miniaturised Thunderbolt and SSD drives are, this seems a little bigger than it should be. Still, it’s compact enough to throw in a bag.
If you need backup storage (and you do), you might be willing to spend extra dough for the fastest possible speeds. In that case, yes, this should be the one you buy. It’s the best Thunderbolt drive I’ve used yet—one of the best external hard drives, period. And it makes Thunderbolt finally feel worth it.
LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt/USB 3.0
• Storage: 120 GB (also available in 256 SSD and 1 TB HDD)
• Input: Thunderbolt, USB 3.0
• Size: 3.5 x 5.5 x 0.97 in.
• Weight: 260 g
• Price: £170
• Giz Rank: 4.5 stars
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£170 for a 120GB SSD, OUCH, especially when you can get the same sized version for at least £50, this is one heck of a premium for an almost useless backup drive!
Plus those write speeds are slooooooowwwwwwww, better off buying a small enclosure and making one yourself, the read/write speeds are not bottlenecked even by USB 3.0, you can make yourself one of these for a fraction of the price, £50 for the SSD and £16 for the enclosure, job’s a good’un.