LaCie Rugged eSATA 500 GB

LaCie's famous Rugged family of external hard drives has a new member, with this 500 GB version including a disc that spins at 7200 rpm and offers your choice of a USB 2.0 or eSATA connection.  That's an impressive offering that should allow this hard drive to compete with the best of them.

It has been toughened to meet the MIL STD 810F standard, which means it can withstand falls from heights up to 2.2 m, splashes of water and any number of other demanding tests set out in this standard originally developed by the US military.

Much of the brunt is taken by the bright orange rubber exterior that covers the outside of the drive, which is backed up by another layer of protection on the inside.  That leaves the drive a little larger than some of its competitors, but it's a lot tougher.  The quality of the finish itself is absolutely exemplary.

At the back, there are three different ports:

There's a mini USB 2.0 port which you can use with just about any computer.  This can power the hard drive itself.

There's also an eSATA port which you can use for faster data transfer if your computer has an eSATA port.  It can either power itself using the Power eSATA standard, which isn't supported by all computers, or, failing that, you can fall back on the third port.  Its job is to provide power from another USB port if your computer's eSATA port or USB port can't provide enough power.


Of course, we did our tests over both USB and eSATA.  With the former, the results were relatively unsurprising and matched what we've seen from other drives.

However, most people will buy the Rugged eSATA 500 GB because they want to be able to get a performance boost by using the eSATA port.  For them, the USB port is only a last resort for use on other people's computers or to connect their hard drive to a media centre or TV.

Here are the results from our two sets of tests (USB in orange, eSATA in grey):

Read speeds in MB/s for three different types of file (small, medium and large)

Write speeds in MB/s for three different types of file (small, medium and large)

This hard drive takes on a whole new life when you use the eSATA connection, which doubled and in some cases tripled, the read and write speeds we obtained with our three sets of test files.  Its performance matched what we'd expect from a hard drive installed directly in a computer.