LaCie Rugged Mini 2TB Portable Hard Drive | USB 3.0 (LAC9000298)

Many modern Mac users assume that they must spend a fortune on high-speed portable SSDs for simple system backups, or they resort to cheap USB thumb drives as a budget compromise. This traditional, spinning mechanical drive completely proves both of those approaches wrong. It delivers whisper-quiet, consistent performance in a surprisingly compact form factor that bypasses the high costs of solid-state storage without sacrificing data integrity. If you are looking for a straightforward, plug-and-play solution to safeguard your Mac's data, this drive hits the absolute sweet spot for reliability. The Bottom Line Should you buy it? Yes. It offers outstanding value and the precise, consistent read/write reliability required for long-term backup duties. Who This Is For vs. Who Should Skip Who This Is For: Mac users requiring a dedicated, durable Time Machine drive that handles regular, high-volume background writes without burning out or stalling. Who Should Skip: Creative professionals who need a lightning-fast drive for live 4K video editing directly from the external volume. The Real-World Test I integrated this drive into my desktop system specifically to serve as a dedicated macOS Time Machine volume, completely replacing a generic 1TB USB stick that had rapidly degraded under the intense pressure of daily backup writes. Setting up the drive was a flawless, true plug-and-play experience; it initialised immediately and began silent background operations without any configuration friction. Having previously invested a significant premium in a LaCie SSD for backup duties on another machine, seeing the swift and completely silent real-world performance of this mechanical version proves that the expensive solid-state option was an entirely unnecessary luxury for standard backup tasks. Quick Scan Scorecard Setup Simplicity: 5/5 – Absolute zero-friction installation; instantly recognised and configured by MacOS. Operational Noise: 5/5 – Whisper-quiet mechanical platter movement that is virtually imperceptible on a desk. Form Factor Design: 5/5 – Notably neat and compact; the iconic protective casing is highly streamlined rather than clunky. Write Durability: 5/5 – Easily handles continuous hourly Time Machine delta updates without a single drop-out. The Pro-Level Detail The reason Apple continues to officially recommend this specific mechanical drive configuration for Time Machine lies directly within the flash memory architecture of modern USB sticks versus traditional spinning platters. Budget flash drives utilise cheap, low-end controllers that suffer severe thermal throttling and permanent cell degradation when subjected to the frequent, sustained small-file write cycles that Time Machine relies on to map system changes. This drive employs a highly stable internal disk structure that handles deep, persistent sector writes indefinitely, ensuring your backup archive won't unexpectedly corrupt when you actually need to restore your system. Technical Note The drive comes packaged with a native USB-C connection cable in the box, ensuring seamless integration with modern Mac hardware out of the box without the need for unappealing legacy adapters or third-party splitters.

Excellent, does what I need it too, backs up all my music, photos, documents etc. Plenty of storage too. It’s easy to use, lightweight and like my previous cheaper model (which started making clicking noises) it’s very quiet and does sound like a plane taking off.

This is my 2nd portable hard drive and seems like the best! Working absolutely fine, faster and password protected area is just wonderful. General formatting for Windows took around 7-8 minutes for entire 1TB but password protection encrypted area for 200GB formatting took around 3 hours; however it is one of best function which can be dismounted any time or can be configured to dismount if idle for whatever time you specify though normal area/unprotected area is always connected unless you disconnect it physically. When you first plug-in it will give you three option to format 1. Windows 2. Mac or 3. Lynux. Only limitation here is it won't allow you to partition the Hard Drive which is not a big deal as it can be resolved by making several folders however after the formatting is successfully done then it can be password protected for the size you want. In my case I did 200GB. This protected area is 256 bit encrypted which is very good I guess one of the best industry standard ensured security. By the way no one should make the whole of this hard drive password protected because in that case you cannot use or access this drive in every computer because to access this password protected are you need to run pr-eloaded .exe file which cannot be run unless you are administrator or Power user for that computer i.e. in offices computers are restricted so you cannot access restricted area and if the whole external hard drive is password protected than no meaning of portability . The unprotected area can be access anywhere you want as like any other USB Drive. I am using USB 2.00 though it is absolutely faster i.e. selected whole of 18 GB of documents which transferred around 15 minutes in one go and very quiet, no noise at all. Do hope and pray that price of this product would come down and very soon the company would make 5 TB in the same physical size. Hope it would last long. I would highly recommend this product, without any question you can buy it.

Excellent drive with fast transfers, I was a bit surprised to see a usb-c connection, but i bought an adaptor and it connects to my PC without problems

As someone that creates videos for lots of different businesses, I needed a quality hard drive that was reliable enough I didn’t have to worry about the safety of my files. I currently use the 2019 MacBook Pro and therefore was happy to see a hard drive option that was USB C and not standard USB. Like I mentioned the main feature for me was the fact it had a USB C connection, which this does. As well as that, I knew I would be traveling around with the hard drive, so seeing it is drop crush and rain resistant is an added benefit. Fortunately, I am yet to have to test out these claims. Although the orange rubber is quite useful in that it stops the hard drive getting scratched or slipping. In terms of size, both physically and storage-wise, I would say it is pretty standard and similar to most other products. Another added benefit that I was pleased with was that it came with a month of Creative Cloud, giving me the opportunity to test out Photoshop and Lightroom. Overall, I have been quite happy with the hard drive so far and had no issues. It has done what it says and stores my files well. It’s not the fastest of hard drives but it is a HDD and not an SSD, so can’t expect too much. The features I have mentioned make this a great purchase. It is a product that I would recommend.

Second one I have purchased over the past years. Excellent product

I’ve owned a LaCie hard drive for a few years with zero trouble so when I needed extra storage I had no hesitation in choosing LaCie again, rather than trawling through the reviews of other brands. 2TB is plenty for me and the price is reasonable in my opinion at just under one hundred quid. I’m using it with an older MacBook which has USB and unfortunately the LaCie Rugged Mini comes with a USB-C cable, so I was on the verge of buying an adapter when I thought I’d try my cable from the older LaCie and it works just fine. Set up was easy and I was backing up with Time Machine within 5 minutes of opening the box. You just have to go into disc utilities on the Mac and allow Time Machine to access the new drive. The tool kit app which you need to do the set up is rather superfluous once you’re up and running and the prompts to download some sort of Adobe software are annoying, unless of course you actually want it, which I don’t, it’s not free after the first month anyway. Ignoring that tiny gripe all was well. I noticed another reviewer saying that the drive goes to sleep if left for extended periods, well that isn’t true, as long as your computer doesn’t go to sleep then the LaCie is active. I knew that my initial Time Machine back up might take a few hours so I left it running and went to bed. The following morning I checked it and it had finished within a couple of hours and the drive was still mounted. I then began copying specific files over and encountered the first and only difficulty. Every single action was requiring my MacBook admin password, which although not a huge problem, became very tedious after a while. Eventually I sussed it out, by opening the drives “get info” window from Finder, the permissions need to be set to read and write rather than read only, that fixed it. Now it works exactly as I want it to and I’m very happy. Speeds are not lightning fast but acceptable, the USB-C connection may or may not affect that, I’m not sure. Finally, it comes housed in a protective case which stops damage from dropping or crushing it, which is a nice touch even if it is a hideous orange colour!

This is a really solid external hard drive, feels tough straight away! the rugged design is great, definitely gives you a bit of peace of mind if you’re using it on the go or for work. It’s easy to use, just plug in and go, no issues with setup at all and works smoothly with both Mac and Windows. Speeds are okay as well for everyday use, i have to transfer alot of large files so can sometimes be tedious but this is to be expected with a HDD, Size is good too, nice and portable without feeling too small or flimsy. Overall it’s a really dependable drive, especially if you’re storing important stuff and want something a bit more durable than standard ones!

Die LaCie Rugged Mini 5TB (2.5 Zoll) externe Festplatte ist ein mobiles Speichermedium, das vor allem durch seine legendäre Robustheit überzeugt. Das markante, orangefarbene Gehäuse, bestehend aus einer stoßdämpfenden Gummihülle und einem widerstandsfähigen Aluminiumkern, schützt die interne 2.5-Zoll-HDD effektiv vor den Widrigkeiten des mobilen Einsatzes. In Rezensionen wird die Festplatte für ihre Sturzfestigkeit (bis 1,2 m) und ihre Fähigkeit, hohem Druck standzuhalten (bis zu 1 Tonne), gelobt, was sie zu einem Favoriten bei Fotografen und Videografen im Außendienst macht. Die 5 TB Kapazität bietet dabei ausreichend Platz für große Datenmengen. Die Schnittstelle erfolgt via USB 3.0 (oder je nach Modell USB-C), was eine unkomplizierte Plug-and-Play-Nutzung an Mac- und Windows-Systemen ermöglicht. Während die Zuverlässigkeit und die physische Unverwüstlichkeit konstant positiv hervorgehoben werden, weisen einige Nutzer darauf hin, dass die Übertragungsgeschwindigkeiten mit durchschnittlich 130-150 MB/s für eine herkömmliche HDD typisch sind, jedoch nicht an die Leistung moderner SSDs heranreichen. Wer maximale Geschwindigkeit benötigt, sollte zu einer anderen Produktlinie greifen. Für den Schutz sensibler Daten im Feld ist die LaCie Rugged Mini 5TB dennoch eine oft empfohlene Lösung. Gerne wieder!

This is a great portable external drive, especially for those who are on the move. The transfer speed is decent, and the outer case is very sturdy. I highly recommend this

Just plugged into my mac all working well. I will return from my travels after a few months and hope to see it still functioning as a time machine backup.

Já andava a namorar esse disco há imenso tempo! Adoro o facto de ter borracha a toda a volta para evitar que fique danificado com facilidade! Estou a gostar muito e é rápido! 👍🏻

I got this in desperation, after my iMac decided it did not like WD for backing up. It still did not work with this LaCie. Frustrated, because this was a new drive and expensive, I narrowed down the issue to my RAM upgrade. As soon as I removed the faulty memory and replaced it with the original Mac memory, bam it did my backup in 20 minutes. It was an expensive purchase $160 for only 2TB, but this will be my trusty reliable backup drive for my iMac to come. I don't want to go through what I did again. Starting from scratch 3x. Without a backup because the Mac corrupted my other two WD drives with the backups. If you are on the fence, trust me when I say that in the end, it's not worth losing data and time to start over. The build is amazing. It's solid, small and has a led indicator light. Comes with two cables and Adobe Creative suite free trial. It's supposed to be rain proof, drop proof and can handle 1 ton runover by a truck. SHIPPING: Arrived sooner than expected with Prime in a bubble envelope no signature. No padded packaging by Amazon. Lucky I was home and saw it stuffed in my mailbox. If someone stole it, it would have been a nightmare. If it was not the Rugged LaCie, I would have returned it and asked for padded secure shipping. CON: the USB plug into the drive wobbles and does not fully insert. This is a problem if you travel or use this drive on the go. At home you can carefully leave it undisturbed, but why make something so solid to make a delicate USB connection? And this is the latest new drive from LaCie. They might have done this to make room for silicone, but it is better to have a secure connection. I tried removing the silicone protection and inserting the USB that way but it still does not fully click in and insert. There is a gap. Just be very careful about this. The quality otherwise feels amazing with it's thick aluminium casing. I still recommend it for MAC.