LaCie Rugged SSD4 evaluate: Incredible, weatherwized performer — and crowd pleasing!

Greatest Costs At present: LaCie Rugged SSD4

I’ve at all times loved LaCie’s use of the pleasant shade orange in lots of the firm’s exterior storage units. So I used to be joyful to open the Rugged SSD4 field and spot the acquainted joyous hue adorning the gadget. That it’s super-compatible 40Gbps USB4 and fast-as-all-get-out didn’t harm my temper both.

Learn on to be taught extra, then see our roundup of the very best exterior drives for comparability.

What are the LaCie Rugged SSD4’s options?

Past the USB4 I’ve already rattled on about, the Rugged SSD4 is a silver and white rectangle roughly 3.75-inches lengthy, 2.25-inches vast, and half an inch thick with out its jacket. The orange silicone jacket extends that to round 4.15-inches lengthy, 2.65-inches vast, and 0.75 inches thick. Weight is just a little beneath 4 ounces.

There’s additionally an orange silicone plug that covers the Sort-C port on the top of the unit, however in my solely nit about this drive — it’s not captive. Not captive means simpler to lose — even when it’s shiny orange. There’s additionally an influence/exercise gentle subsequent to the USB port and you may see it via the jacket.

In addition to brightening up your day, the good factor in regards to the orange shade is that it stands out. When you’re vulnerable to misplacing issues, particularly exterior, orange is way simpler to identify than most colours.

The Rugged SSD4 is IP54 rated, which means that it may well stand up to mud in addition to water spray. Nevertheless, having seen a whole lot of IP-rated designs, I feel you’d be okay with even dropping the Rugged SSD4 in a bucket of water — assuming the top cap is in place. Not that I’m recommending it, thoughts you. You’re by yourself in case you do.

As to such a scenario, LaCie (Seagate) warranties the drive for 3 years and in addition presents free information restoration. Be sure you dry the unit completely first, as water dripping out on the corporate’s check station may void the assure — and the corporate’s good will.

How a lot does the LaCie Rugged SSD4 value?

Though not low-cost, the Rugged SSD4 is reasonably priced given the efficiency, and lots lower than the 80Gbps competitors together with LaCie’s personal Thunderbolt 5 Rugged SSD Pro5. The 1TB model is $135, the 2TB is $250, and $480 for 4TB mannequin we examined.

How briskly is the LaCie Rugged SSD4?

Fairly darn quick, I’m right here to inform you. The Rugged SSD4 is the speediest 40Gbps USB4 SSD I’ve examined general, although not by a ton. In the true world, it’s additionally aggressive with the 80Gbps drives we’ve examined beneath most circumstances.

I’ve included LaCie’s personal Rugged SSD Pro5 to baseline the Rugged collection, however it’s an 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5 SSD. Therefore the huge benefit in a few artificial benchmarks. General, nonetheless, the efficiency hole isn’t almost as vast as you may suppose.

Notice that I now use FastCopy in switch exams because it’s far quicker than Home windows Explorer at transferring information, although the benefit is extra obvious with inside PCIe 4.0/5.0 SSDs than with exterior ones. Notice that optimum efficiency requires disabling actual time virus checking and setting your exterior SSD for optimum efficiency in Disk Administration.

The Rugged SSD4 outstripped the Rugged SSD Pro5 in two of CrystalDiskMark 8’s 4K exams, falling brief in two others. Notice that every one these outcomes are from retests on our new check mattress, and will not match the numbers within the older opinions.

Sure, the Adata SE920 is aces at real-world transfers beneath Explorer, and the Rugged SSD4 managed to additionally outperform the Rugged SSD Pro5 in two exams in Explorer. We weren’t anticipating that. Then once more, it’s a more moderen drive. The business strikes quick.

Once more, the newer Rugged SSD4 really beat the Pro5 in each Explorer and FastCopy when writing 450GB. Go determine.

Notice that I banged on the Rugged SSD4 laborious making an attempt to get it to decelerate its write tempo, writing a number of 950GB information to it consecutively. It by no means dropped beneath 1.65GBps. Candy, and nice for videographers. The overwhelming majority of SSDs will drop to five,000- to 800MBps.

General, the Rugged SSD4 is a good performer and in the true world outperformed its far pricier cousin.

Must you purchase the LaCie Rugged SSD4?

When you’re in search of the very best performing 40Gbps USB4 SSD in the marketplace — sure. When you’re in search of a ruggedized SSD which you can plug into absolutely anything — sure. When you like the colour orange — sure.

Then again, if efficiency is paramount, the soon-to-be-reviewed (Macworld) 80Gbps OWC 1M2 80G is the quickest exterior SSD I’ve examined. Albeit at a a lot, a lot larger worth.

How we check

Drive exams at the moment make the most of Home windows 11 24H2, 64-bit operating off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Professional in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Extremely i5 225 feeding/fed by two Essential 64GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (128GB of reminiscence whole). Each 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are built-in and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Inside PCIe 5.0 SSDs concerned in testing are mounted in a Asus ROG PCIe 5.0 M.2 adapter card and a HighPoint 7604A 16x PCIe 5.0 4-port M.2 adapter card.

We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 artificial benchmarks (to maintain article size down, we solely report one) to search out the storage gadget’s potential efficiency, then a collection of 48GB and 450GB transfers exams utilizing Home windows Explorer drag and drop to point out what you’ll see beneath Window, in addition to the far quicker Xcopy and FastCopy to point out what’s doable.

A 25GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Highpoint 7604A is used because the second drive in our switch exams. Previously the 48GB exams had been carried out with a RAM disk.

Every check is carried out on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Notice that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency might lower as a result of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This concern has abated somewher with the present crop of SSDs with extra mature controllers and much quicker late-generation NAND.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can differ by capability as a result of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND accessible for secondary caching. Distributors additionally sometimes swap parts. When you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.