Iomega Prestige Portable
Another good-looking, slimline drive, the Iomega Prestige Portable comes in a black brushed aluminium casing and is small enough to fit into a pocket. Drop Shock technology protects the drive heads and discs should you miss your pocket and let the unit plunge earthward.
The drive also comes with Iomega’s Protection Suite, which comprises McAfee VirusScan Plus, Iomega QuikProtect, EMC Retrospect HD and EMC Retrospect Express, plus 2GB of free online backup space through the Mozyhome Online backup service.
For extra data protection and security, AES 256-bit hardware encryption is built into the drive.
Reg Rating 80%
Price £123 (1TB), £187 (1.5TB)
More info Iomega
LaCie Rikiki 3.0
With its sleek-looking brushed aluminium enclosure, Lacie’s Rikiki 3.0 measures just 119 x 75 x 19mm and will fit into a large pocket if need be. It weighs 200g.
The drive comes with backup software for both Windows (Genie Backup Assistant, which is nice and easy to use) and Mac OS X (Intego Backup).
As well as the basic capacity of the drive, you also get 10GB of Wuala online storage free for a year if you use the drive's serial number. LaCie backs the drive with a two-year warranty.
Reg Rating 75%
Price £85 (500GB), £125 (1TB), £160 (1.5TB)
More info LaCie
LaCie Rugged Mini
The Rugged Mini is the smallest member of LaCie’s tough family of external hard drives and the one with the fewest connectivity options, namely one: it is a USB 3.0-only drive.
Not only is it well protected from everyday bumps and scrapes, it is not a drive you are likely to lose in a hurry, as the external rubbery protection is finished in bright orange.
LaCie offers two 500GB versions of the drive: a standard 5400rpm model and a faster 7200rpm one. As the latter is only a tenner more than the standard model, it is pretty much a no-brainer as to which model to plump for in the line-up at this capacity.
Reg Rating 75%
Price £90 (500GB), £100 (500GB 7200rpm), £135 (1TB), £170 (1.5TB)
More info LaCie
Next page: Samsung M2 Portable 3.0
COMMENTS
Rugged
I've got a couple of the older generation Lacie Rugged orange drives and they are good. The robust enclosure just gives a bit of peace of mind if you have to lug around backups offsite everyday.
I just wish someone out there would make an enclosure like that (but perhaps even better) so you could fit your own drive. I'd be tempted to stick an SSD in one for added shock proofery, though SSDs aren't exactly renowned for their data reliability just yet.
What I'd also like to see is someone create an mSATA enclosure to fit these types of SSD... http://regmedia.co.uk/2010/11/08/blade_1.jpg
120GB+ of rapid shock-proof storage in something smaller than a 2.5" enclosure would be excellent.
Re: Rugged
I echo Mr T's sentiments. Never have Passports lasted for very long and the most trivial shock seems to kill them.
but there are 2TB drives on the market
like Western Digital My Passport 2 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive WDBY8L0020BBKNESN ($199 on eBay, $190.86 at Amazon). Why didn't you include it in the review? Of course Samsung M2 (and S2 BTW) is very good drive, but you won't see 1.5TB and 2TB drives from Samsung in the nearest future IMO.
nice, but not what I'm after...
Hey, El Reg...
I currently have a RAID5 14TB rack-mounted fileserver I built myself (I tinker - my wife gave me a full-size 19" computer rack for one of my birthdays) which is about to reach the end of its life. I don't feel the need to build yet another one, so how about reviews of rack-mounted fileservers?
