This year at CES, Seagate, and LaCie by extension, announced a new portable HDD, the LaCie Mobile Drive. This new external storage solution has a beautiful diamond cut covering. The LaCie Mobile Drive comes in capacities up to 5TB and leverages a USB-C interface.
This year at CES, Seagate, and LaCie by extension, announced a new portable HDD, the LaCie Mobile Drive. This new external storage solution has a beautiful diamond cut covering. The LaCie Mobile Drive comes in capacities up to 5TB and leverages a USB-C interface.
As digital photos and videos increase in quality they increase in size. Many of the files are near and dear to the users and should be backed up. LaCie offers a simple and stylish way for users to do just that. The LaCie Mobile allows users to backup on the go through its easy-to-use software, through either a single click our through a scheduled automatic backup. With upwards of 5TB, users can store up to 500,000 high-resolution photos or up to 165 hours of 4K video. The drive is compatible with both Mac and Windows, though there is a space gray color specifically designed to match the modern MacBooks.
For our review we will be looking at the 2TB LaCie Mobile Drive that has an overall smaller form factor.
LaCie Mobile Drive Specifications
| Capacity | 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 5TB |
| Interface | USB-C (USB 3.0 compatible) |
| Dimensions (LxWxH) | 10 x 87.8 x 121.6 mm |
| Weight | 0.2kg |
| Warranty | 2-year limited |
Design and Build
As stated, the LaCie Mobile Drive is a nice looking portable storage solution, as are most products the company releases. The drive comes in Moon Silver and Space gray and has sharper cut angles on the sides with LaCie branding on top. While LaCie products typically look great, the angular design stands out more than the typical portable hard drive.
Flipping the drive over there is pertinent information such as regulatory compliances, part number, and capacity.
Performance
To test the performance of the LaCie Mobile Drive we used the BlackMagic disk speed test on a current generation MacBook Air as well as leveraging a Lenovo ThinkStation 920 for Windows testing. We will be comparing the LaCie Mobile Drive to the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch 2TB.
In BlackMagic, the LaCie drive gave us 135.7MB/s read and 118.5MB/s write compared to the Seagate’s 123.3MB/s read and 122MB/s write.
In our PC testing, during 2MB sequential the LaCie had sequential reads of 134MB/s and writes of 41.9MB/s compared to the Seagate’s 41.9MB/s read and 28.1MB/s write. With 2MB random we saw 41.6 IOPS read and 17.7 IOPS write for the LaCie and the Seagate had 17.4 IOPS read and 14 IOPS write.
For our 4K test the LaCie gave us 117.6 IOPS read and 49.1 IOPS write and the Seagate had 114 IOPS read and 47.4 IOPS write.
Conclusion
The LaCie Mobile Drive is a beautifully designed external storage solution that makes it easy for the everyday consumer to backup their files. The drive comes in capacities from 1TB to 5TB and leverages a USB-C interface. The drive also has a Mac-specific version available in Space Gray.
With performance the drive posted expected results, given the HDD inside. In BlackMagic the drive hit 135.7MB/s read and 118.5MB/s write. For Windows testing we saw 2MB sequential speeds of 134MB/s read and 41.9MB/s write. Random testing gave us 41.6 IOPS read and 17.7 IOPS write for 2MB and 117.6 IOPS read and 49.1 IOPS write for 4K.
Users that need a stylish storage solution with lots of capacity will be in luck with the LaCie Mobile drive. If one needs more performance there are several other options as well as a SSD version of this drive.
LaCie Portable Drives at Amazon
Sign up for the StorageReview newsletter
