LaCie intros Portable SSD with 10Gbps USB-C, storage up to 2TB

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in Current Mac Hardware
LaCie on Wednesday announced its new Portable SSD, an external drive intended for people working in video, photography, and other media-intensive fields.

LaCie Portable SSD


The drive uses USB 3.1 Gen 2, supporting throughput up to 10 gigabits per second via an included USB 3.1 type-C cable. Alternately a second cable can connect to USB-A devices.

Read speeds run up to 540 megabytes per second, enough to transfer an hour of 4K 30fps video in less than a minute, according to the company. Write speeds are slightly slower at 500 megabytes per second.

The drive comes pre-formatted in exFAT, and in 500-gigabyte, 1-terabyte, and 2-terabyte configurations typically priced at $124.99, $269.99, and $539.99 respectively. The 2-terabyte option should be enough to hold up to 65 hours of 4K30 video, or as many as 20,000 RAW photos, assuming a 100-megabyte image size.

LaCie Portable SSD


The LaCie Portable SSD can be preordered at B&H, where the 1-terabyte version is marked down to $249.99 ($20 off retail). The 2-terabyte model is on sale for $509.99, while the 500GB option is $114.99.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    Ooooh! This is very tempting! Been waiting for a 2tb ssd that was under $500!
  • Reply 2 of 12
    Wish it came in 16Tb
    djkfisher
  • Reply 3 of 12
    I found a way to have my 2 TB drive in the Mac Mini for less than what Apple charges for the 500 GB upgrade.
    My late 2012 has 1 TB of SSD (after  1 TB drive failed and I replaced.  and 1 TB of mechanical)

    so how much faster is the new i7 than mine ...?


  • Reply 4 of 12
    inexco said:
    I found a way to have my 2 TB drive in the Mac Mini for less than what Apple charges for the 500 GB upgrade.
    My late 2012 has 1 TB of SSD (after  1 TB drive failed and I replaced.  and 1 TB of mechanical)

    so how much faster is the new i7 than mine ...?


    A six year old laptop is probably way slower than a current one, but if you are happy with it then no need to upgrade. 
    thefella
  • Reply 5 of 12
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,294member
    inexco said:
    I found a way to have my 2 TB drive in the Mac Mini for less than what Apple charges for the 500 GB upgrade.
    My late 2012 has 1 TB of SSD (after  1 TB drive failed and I replaced.  and 1 TB of mechanical)

    so how much faster is the new i7 than mine ...?


    Here, let me Google AppleInsider search that for you: https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/07/17/what-six-years-of-retina-macbook-pro-evolution-gets-you

    For comparison, the 2012 MBP Geekbench scores for the i7 quad-core version are 3371 for single and 6572 for multi. The 2018 quad-core i7 scores are 5583 single, and 18,840 for multi. So, depending on what you're doing somewhere between "roughly double" and "roughly triple" the speed from that CPU.

    More importantly in terms of user perception, however, is the SSD speed. The SSD you have in your 2012 is around 10x faster than a 5400rpm hard drive, sure, but the current SSD tech used in the MBP is 10x faster than your SSD. This makes at least as big a difference (if not way larger) in the overall user perception of speed. File copies of even multi-GB large files are nearly instantaneous.

    The 2012 was a great machine (part of that was the advanced chipset it used before Intel entered its decline, part of that was that it was not terribly difficult to upgrade) -- I'm writing this to you on my mid-2012 non-Retina one right now! -- but the new model surpasses it in every possible way by multiple times over. This is probably a really good year to upgrade.

    Pro tip: keep Mojave on the old 2012 and keep it around to help you more easily transition away over time from obsolete apps that can only run in 32-bit mode. Mojave will be supported with security updates for at least another three years, so even if (IF) the 2012 gets left behind with the next macOS version, it's still a perfectly safe machine to use into 2020 at least.
    edited November 2018 thefella
  • Reply 6 of 12
    I’m just a neophyte - is using one 2TB SSD faster than using four 500GB SSDs?
  • Reply 7 of 12
    bageljoeybageljoey Posts: 2,004member
    berndog said:
    I’m just a neophyte - is using one 2TB SSD faster than using four 500GB SSDs?
    I know, right?  It does seem that there should be some economies of scale when opting for higher storage...
  • Reply 8 of 12
    Ooooh! This is very tempting! Been waiting for a 2tb ssd that was under $500!
    You’re a little late to the party, here’s one for $272. 
    https://www.amazon.com/Micron-1100-SATA-2-5-inch-MTFDDAK2T0TBN-1AR1ZABYY/dp/B01LB05YOO

    This drive is a rip-off. Why would you not buy something like the above and throw it in a $20-30 USB 3.1gen2 case?
    edited November 2018
  • Reply 9 of 12
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,861administrator
    Ooooh! This is very tempting! Been waiting for a 2tb ssd that was under $500!
    You’re a little late to the party, here’s one for $272. 
    https://www.amazon.com/Micron-1100-SATA-2-5-inch-MTFDDAK2T0TBN-1AR1ZABYY/dp/B01LB05YOO

    This drive is a rip-off. Why would you not buy something like the above and throw it in a $20-30 USB 3.1gen2 case?
    Hang on just a bit longer, we'll be giving our recommendations for enclosures a bit later today.
    fastasleep
  • Reply 10 of 12
    polymniapolymnia Posts: 1,080member
    how does this compare to the Samsung T3/T5 drives? I’ve been using those the last few years and I love how compact they are. An art director saw my T5 attached just yesterday and asked if he could borrow my “SD card reader”!

    in my business, the default drive has been the Lacie Rugged for years. They were bulletproof but soooo big. These ultra small drives are so much easier to drop in a bag. It’s important if you carry one everywhere. So I left Lacie for the T3 a few years ago. I’d be happy to go back if they have caught up to Samsung in form factor. 
  • Reply 11 of 12
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,727member
    I've long since given up using prebuilt externals for small capacities like this.  Yes, I have large multi-TB RAID enclosures in my studio but for anything 1TB and under I buy bare SSDs and $10 connectors for USB-3 and USB-C all from Amazon so I can swap the adapters if using Mac Pro or MBP. It's a breeze to travel with an MBP and a few SSDs and connectors in my Photography bag.  I also keep an eye on ever lower SSD prices for higher capacities.  I have six adapter cables and about a dozen loose SSDs I can easily swap about even from Mac to PC.  Although most are APFS I also have some formatted for PCs so I use NTFS for Mac on all my Macs so I can also use them up on both.


    Cable adapter for SSD -USB-C: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0133F30R8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0133F30R8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
    Cable adapter for USB-3: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01440BTS8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
    RAID: https://smile.amazon.com/Thunder3-Quad-Enclosure-Windows-Certified/dp/B076C72RX2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541689549&sr=8-1&keywords=quad-X
    edited November 2018
  • Reply 12 of 12
    mknelsonmknelson Posts: 1,125member
    berndog said:
    I’m just a neophyte - is using one 2TB SSD faster than using four 500GB SSDs?
    4 x 500GB drives can be a lot faster if you set them up in a RAID 0 (striped) configuration.

    Speaking of speed - it looks like this SSD, like others I've seen, are using a traditional SATA 3 connection internally. Thats still limited to 6Gb/s, far short of the USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 potential.
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