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LACIE RUGGED SSD PRO 1TB THUNDERBOLT 3 £399/$399 LaCie.com
RIGHT The LaCie Rugged SSD Pro has a new black exterior instead of the characteristic bright orange rubber coating
Black is the neworangewhen it comes to the fastest portable external hard drives. It’s been almost impossible not to have owned, or at least worked with, one of the LaCie Rugged external hard drives in the past decade, made so obvious with their orange rubber coating. Well now, black is back and the latest Thunderbolt 3 LaCie Rugged SSD Pro drives are muchmore stealthy, much faster and a lot more rugged in every way. The latest family of Rugged drives uses a silent Solid State Disc inside, far faster and more reliable than any conventional HDD, which has a spinning, mechanical drive. All these HDD units will eventually go wrong. They obviously don’t like to be dropped and will eventually wear out and die. SSD drives have no moving parts so there’s nothing to wear out, and they’re much smaller. LaCie’s Rugged SSD drives still come in the trademark orange and are ideal for 4K video, and come in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB versions. These are the standard versions that transfer data at up to 950MB/s, and are compatible with Thunderbolt 3, USB-C and USB 3.0 on Mac and Windows computers. The black Rugged SSD Pro is the professional version and is ideal for up to 8K video. It has the same connectivity, but canmanage transfer speeds of up to 2800 MB/s when used with a Thunderbolt 3 computer. That’s incredibly fast and lets you download files or edit with no slowing down at all. The included cable also works with USB-C computers, as this is the same fit as Thunderbolt. But you do lose the impressive data transfer speed this
way. At least it works withUSB-C PCs, as some Thunderbolt 3 SSDs don’t. The drive works with Apple’s Time Machine, and comes with LaCie Toolkit software, which offers additional features such as drive mirroring and backups. There’s also a five-year warranty and five years of free Seagate data recovery software, which is one of the best. The Rugged SSD Pro also comes with a free one-month Adobe Creative Cloud membership, with all the apps such as Premiere Pro CC and After Effects. And, of course, it’s rugged. It’s waterproof and dust proof to IP67 rating, can withstand a drop of 3m/ 9.8ft on to a hard floor and is pressure resistant. LaCie says it can withstand being driven over by a 2-tonne car. This now our go-to hard drive on location when we want speed and portability, but we do use a Thunderbolt 3-equipped MacBook Pro laptop. When we get back to base, we download the files to desktop- style units with a backup system for ultimate security. However, if your computer is not Thunderbolt 3, you’re
better off saving a bit of money and going for the regular LaCie Rugged SSD versions. AD PROMOVIEMAKERRATING: 10/10 It’s rugged and really fast, if you have the right Apple computer Pros: The fastest, most rugged SSD you can buy Cons: Maximum speed is Thunderbolt 3 only SPECIFICATIONS Capacity: 1TB Transfer speed: Up to 2800MB/s Hard drives: NVMe SSD Connection: Thunderbolt 3, USB 3.1 Type-C Connectors: Thunderbolt 3 cable Software: LaCie toolkit Drop resistance: 3m/9.8ft Dimension (wxlxd): 65x17x98mm/2.6x0.7x3.86in Weight: 100g/0.22lb
“It’s waterproof and dust proof to IP67 rating, can withstand a drop of 3m/9.8ft on to a hard floor and is pressure resistant”
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SUMMER 2020 PRO MOVIEMAKER
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