LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle

amazon LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle reviews

LaCie’s two Rugged RAID Shuttle hard drives offer the choice of high capacity and fast performance (in stripe mode) or half capacity with all data replicated on the second hard drive. It is ideal for anyone who works in the field and generates loads of data.

Designed with professionals in mind — from filmmakers, photographers, and musicians — the $529.99 LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle aims at anyone working in the field and generating massive amounts of data that they cannot afford to lose. And it does the job well enough to be our new Editors’ Choice for rugged external hard drives. The impact-resistant gray aluminum housing houses two physical hard drives. A RAID setting allows for 8TB capacity and fast performance, or a more secure 4TB with copies of each file on each drive. The device also meets the IP54 specification for dust and water resistance, and it is rated to survive a 4-foot drop. Finally, it fits easily in a tool bag or in a padded overnight courier envelope to allow professionals to send files to the office or studio when data connections are slow or non-existent.

It’s all in the name: RAID, Plus for sure.

The Rugged RAID Shuttle fits in with LaCie’s line of Rugged hard drives, which have a reputation for reliability. Available in only 8TB capacity, this device looks like a single hard drive for your operating system. But the combination of the form factor, the gray case, and the silicone protective pad around the bezel — the same orange color as the weatherproof outdoor extension cord — makes it look like a small tablet for use for children waiting to be powered on. About the size and shape of a 5.25-inch, 1.1 x 6.8 x 6-inch internal hard drive, it weighs 2.1 pounds. Inside the box are two hard-drive-based 5,400-rpm Seagate Barracuda drives, a set of 2.5-inch 4TB drives that fit side-by-side.

When it ships, the device is set to RAID 0. In addition to giving you access to 8TB of storage, this setting also gives you a performance boost compared to using either drive. For example, when writing to a hard drive, RAID 0 can simultaneously write to a second hard drive where the hard drive will have to queue and wait for one hard drive to be ready to accept more data. The RAID 1 setup offers only half the storage capacity and slower performance, but the second hard drive will automatically mirror the first hard drive. If either drive fails, you’ll have a second copy of every file.

That brings us to the “Rugged” part of the name. Quite simply, the Rugged RAID Shuttle is designed to survive conditions that could corrupt your data. Meeting the IP54 standards for dust and water resistance and drop resistance up to 4 feet, it is also rated as impact resistant enough to stand up to being run over by a 2,205-pound vehicle.

Shock resistance thanks to the silicone case, combined with the hard shell and shockproof brackets inside. Of course, no hard-drive-based hard drive can withstand shock as well as an SSD, which not only lacks a hard drive and then head to damage but also has a lower mass to generate less kinetic energy when falling. But the Rugged RAID Shuttle scores well by hard drive benchmarks. For example, both it and the G-Tech ArmorATD are rated to survive a 4-foot drop, but the ArmorATD’s rating is for carpeted concrete rather than simply concrete, and its shell only holds up be pressurized up to 1,000 pounds. Also, keep in mind that setting a LaCie hard drive to RAID 1 effectively increases durability by ensuring that you can destroy one drive and still have all your data on the other.

The orange shield on the Rugged RAID Shuttle includes a tab to cover the power connector, and the uncovered USB-C connector is rated IP54, so the hard drive will easily survive a drop of water or when carried in the rain. However, the IP54 specification does not include immersion. If you’re working where you might drop the hard drive in a lake or even a puddle, you might want to consider an external hard drive with a higher rating, like the IP68 rated ADATA HD830 or one of the LaCie external SSDs, like the SSD Pro Solid State Drive are IP67 rated.

Talent Toolkit and Other Features

The hard drive is formatted in exFAT by default to work with both PC and Mac. If you’re not moving it between different types of computers, you can format it in your operating system’s native format (NTFS for Windows or HFS+ for Mac).

LaCie ships the device with two cables. One has a USB Type-C connector on each end; the other end is a USB Type-C-to-Type-A. Also included in the box is a power block with replaceable plug modules for various domestic and foreign electrical outlets. The power block is only needed when connected to ports of USB 3.0 type or below, which cannot provide enough power over the USB bus to run the hard drives. Connect to such a port, and the status light comes on to let you know the power adapter is plugged in. The second LED indicates hard drive activity.

The hard drive includes the downloadable LaCie RAID Manager and LaCie Toolkit, a three-year warranty, and a three-year Rescue Data Recovery Service. RAID Manager allows you to switch hard drives between RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes and update the firmware. Changing settings requires more than loading the program; select Modify and select the RAID settings you want. The change will format the hard drive, so you’ll need to back up any data first, but the app will warn you before doing anything and make you poke the recessed button with a paperclip to confirm what you mean.

The toolKit offers some welcome utilities. Seagate Encryption allows you to create a password to encrypt all the data on your LaCie drive. The Mirror option allows you to create Mirror folders on your LaCie hard drive and your computer’s hard drive, and then automatically sync each folder with the other when you move files to or delete them from either. The Backup and Restore tools, available only for Windows, allow you to define full or partial backups to run continuously, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or just once.

where can you get a LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle online

LaCie Rugged Raid Shuttle 8TB External Hard Drive Portable HDD – USB-C USB 3.0 Compatible, Drop Shock Dust Water Resistant, for Mac and PC Computer Desktop Laptop, 1 Mo Adobe CC (STHT8000800): Buy it now

Test: RAID 0 Means Fast

We’ve compared the Rugged RAID Shuttle with many hard-drive-based portable drives, including the affordable WD Elements, Seagate Backup Ultra Touch, and certainly equally sure G-Tech ArmorATD earlier, and the ADATA HD830 is even more rugged. We tested all of those drives in the 2TB version, although other capacities are available for each. However, the main performance difference between any of them and the LaCie drive is that none of the other drives support RAID, and we tested the LaCie drive using its default RAID 0 settings.

We used our standard Intel X299-based storage for our PC tests, equipped with a 2nd Gen USB-C port hosted on the motherboard. For our Mac tests, we used a 2016 MacBook Pro and tested the hard drive through one of the USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 3 combo ports using the included USB Type-C cable.

PCMark 7 Secondary Memory Test

The PCMark7 Secondary Memory sub-test evaluates hard drive speed using a proprietary score. The test uses a mix of simulated workloads, including Windows Defender scanning, video editing tasks, and application launching.

That is one of the only two spots where the Rugged RAID Shuttle doesn’t shine. It comes in the last place with the Seagate drive, with a score of only about 70% of the ADATA HD830 and WD Elements hard drives and only about 60% of the score G-Tech ArmorATD.

Crystal DiskMark

Crystal DiskMark tests sequential read and writes speeds (contiguous data transfers in a straight line), which is the best case for hard drive units, and theoretically, a better case for RAID 0 drives.

Sequential Read results are what we expected, with RAID 0 Shuttle Rugged RAID equipped with more than twice the next fastest hard drive performance. But in the sequential write test, scores are so low that we don’t report it because we don’t believe it’s valid, especially since the hard drive scores well in other tests related to writing to the hard drive. The problem could also be specifically related to Crystal DiskMark and how it interacts with RAID 0 drives. All four of the comparison hard drives matched closely in both the Read and Write tests, yielding just the difference in speed of several megabytes per second.

Check folder transfer

We run the Drag and Drop Folder Transfer Test on our MacBook Pro laptop. The test included copying our standard 1.2GB folder from the test hard drive and is one of the hard drives write tests where the Rugged RAID Shuttle delivers the best performance of the bunch.

The LaCie drive was just 3 seconds faster than the second two and just 5 seconds faster than the slowest drive in the bunch, which is enough to notice but not enough to matter. On the other hand, the results imply that you will see a larger and more significant difference for real-world usage if you copy folders with many gigabytes of data.

Blackmagic 3.1″ hard drive speed test

LaCie hard drives have delivered an impressive performance on MacBook Pro with the Blackmagic Hard Drive Speed Test utility, which measures hard drive traffic to play different video formats.

In both the Disk Read and Disk Write tests, the measured results of the Rugged RAID Shuttle are more than double the score for the next fastest hard drive. ArmorATD and Seagate Backup Plus Ultra are essentially on second, and they’re just a few megabytes/second faster than the WD Elements and ADATA HD830.

High capacity, durable, fast, and encrypted

In addition to delivering the highest capacity of any drive in LaCie’s Rugged lineup, the LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle delivers the right balance of performance, capacity, and data protection — both in terms of physical and installation durability. Optional RAID 1 for data redundancy — that’s simply unheard of in this way of writing in portable hard drives. You can find external hard drives (such as the ADATA HD830) and external SSDs (for example, LaCie’s own Rugged SSD Pro) with higher dust and water resistance ratings, and SSDs will deliver faster performance. But note that both drives are much lower capacity, don’t support RAID, and the 2TB version of the Rugged SSD Pro costs more than the 8TB Rugged RAID Shuttle.

If you need a higher level of ruggedness or are shopping on a strictly limited budget, you’ll want to check out the other models in our rugged hard drive collection. But suppose you can make good use of the 8TB capacity combined with the other features of the Rugged RAID Shuttle (RAID support, encryption, easy portability). In that case, it will be easier to justify the price per gigabyte.

Advantages

Flat, easy to carry.

It can be set to RAID 0 for higher speed and capacity or RAID 1 for hard drive duplication.

Cables included for USB Type-A and Type-C on PC.

Disadvantage

There is no tab on the Type-C connector to protect it from dust and water.

The price per gigabyte is high, largely due to the rugged design and RAID.