Price : Too low to display
The LaCie Rugged Safe is the most complete mobile storage solution available. It offers multiple levels of data protection, from its unbreakable hardware encryption and the safest biometric authentication technology, to its shock-proof enclosure. Developed for users that need to protect their data against theft, the Rugged Safe boasts AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) 128-bit encryption. This is the same standard used by the U.S. government and organizations worldwide to protect critical documents. The Rugged Safe also features biometric authentication, which enables personalized data control, with access for to up to ten users. In addition to its enhanced security, the Rugged Safe comes with USB 2.0, FireWire 800/400, and is fully plug and play. Once configured, it grants access to authorized users on any Mac or PC with a single finger swipe, requiring no software installation. It’s also bus powered, making it the best solution for people on the go carrying sensitive data.
This review is from : LaCie Rugged All-Terrain SAFE 500 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 800 Portable External Hard Drive 301491
Great Holes! . The primary reason I bought this drive was for the two FW800 ports on the back. Other drives in the LaCie Rugged line only have one FW800 and one FW400, which makes it difficult to daisy-chain FW800 devices. The biometric sensor was only a bonus feature.
This bonus feature caused some problems. Six months after the purchase, I wanted to add another user to the drive (in case I die, and none of my fingers are preserved). I came to find that I need an administrative password that I had previously set and forgotten about. I called LaCie, and there is absolutely no way to recover this password or format the drive without physically mailing it to them. I find this kind of ridiculous, considering the fact that it has a biometric sensor on it.
The drive works by mounting a tiny "LaCie" partition upon being plugged in, then a fingerprint swipe unlocks the real drive. Occasionally while plugging in daisy-chained devices or putting the computer to sleep, the drive will forget that it's "logged in" and disconnect itself from my computer. That's something that I now need to be very careful about while using the drive.
Unless you have a legitimate NEED for biometric security or two FW800 ports, I wouldn't recommend this drive over a regular LaCie Rugged. The bio-sensor only causes headaches, and I'm sure it'll cause plenty more when the drive gets old and frail.
Great Holes! . The primary reason I bought this drive was for the two FW800 ports on the back. Other drives in the LaCie Rugged line only have one FW800 and one FW400, which makes it difficult to daisy-chain FW800 devices. The biometric sensor was only a bonus feature.
This bonus feature caused some problems. Six months after the purchase, I wanted to add another user to the drive (in case I die, and none of my fingers are preserved). I came to find that I need an administrative password that I had previously set and forgotten about. I called LaCie, and there is absolutely no way to recover this password or format the drive without physically mailing it to them. I find this kind of ridiculous, considering the fact that it has a biometric sensor on it.
The drive works by mounting a tiny "LaCie" partition upon being plugged in, then a fingerprint swipe unlocks the real drive. Occasionally while plugging in daisy-chained devices or putting the computer to sleep, the drive will forget that it's "logged in" and disconnect itself from my computer. That's something that I now need to be very careful about while using the drive.
Unless you have a legitimate NEED for biometric security or two FW800 ports, I wouldn't recommend this drive over a regular LaCie Rugged. The bio-sensor only causes headaches, and I'm sure it'll cause plenty more when the drive gets old and frail.
LaCie Rugged All-Terrain SAFE 500 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 800 Portable External Hard Drive 301491 Reviews
Don't be mislead these drives are great!!!! . Don't let that other 1 star review sway you. These drives are great. Yes, they are slower than an unencrypted drive, but the encryption is worth it. Plus you can have up to 10 fingerprints authorized for 10 different users to access the drive, as well as setting admin privileges for each user, etc. A brilliant solution for anyone dealing with secure work that needs to be passed between multiple parties, or anyone just looking for a more secure drive to store their personal information to. I have loved the Rugged drives LaCie has made for years, and this is just a secure evolution of the same drive. I highly recommend it.
Don't be mislead these drives are great!!!! . Don't let that other 1 star review sway you. These drives are great. Yes, they are slower than an unencrypted drive, but the encryption is worth it. Plus you can have up to 10 fingerprints authorized for 10 different users to access the drive, as well as setting admin privileges for each user, etc. A brilliant solution for anyone dealing with secure work that needs to be passed between multiple parties, or anyone just looking for a more secure drive to store their personal information to. I have loved the Rugged drives LaCie has made for years, and this is just a secure evolution of the same drive. I highly recommend it.
LaCie Rugged All-Terrain SAFE 500 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 800 Portable External Hard Drive 301491 Opinions
Great Hard Drive . The LaCie Rugged SAFE is very durable and secure. Although device-level encryption slows transfer rates, the drive is still faster than my old USB 2.0 thanks to the FireWire 800 port. All and all, it's an excellent hard drive and was a snap to setup on OS X Lion 10.7 in 32-bit mode (hold down 3 and 2 at startup). The support on the website was also excellent.
Great Hard Drive . The LaCie Rugged SAFE is very durable and secure. Although device-level encryption slows transfer rates, the drive is still faster than my old USB 2.0 thanks to the FireWire 800 port. All and all, it's an excellent hard drive and was a snap to setup on OS X Lion 10.7 in 32-bit mode (hold down 3 and 2 at startup). The support on the website was also excellent.
So far so good . I just received this product a few days ago and plugged it in last night - started my time machine backup which the first time transfer is 349GB of data - checked back on it about 24 hours later and it has just finished.
All future time-machine backups will be much smaller so the speed of transfer shouldn't be a problem.
I'm using the firewire 800 connection, and looking forward to (crossing-fingers) years to come of trouble-free time machine backups.
All future time-machine backups will be much smaller so the speed of transfer shouldn't be a problem.
I'm using the firewire 800 connection, and looking forward to (crossing-fingers) years to come of trouble-free time machine backups.
Great HD! Extremely Secure! Works Flawlessly with Macbook and iMac 27 inch . ALL DRIVES WITH SHOW A PERFORMANCE HIT IN DATA TRANSFER WHEN YOU INTRODUCE ENCRYPTION!!! With that said this product is Awesome and it works flawlessly with my 2 Macbooks, iMac 27 inch (2009), iBook and eMac!!!
Cons Review
Not Recommended For Corporate Environments . We purchased two of the LaCie SAFE drives after being happy customers for years with their regular rugged line of external drives. We use them for backups, and like having tough drives that we can take off-site without having to handle like cracked eggs. We've used TrueCrypt (open source encryption software) to encrypt the regular rugged drives, and thought using hardware encryption would be faster and more secure. And the biometric feature was a plus.
Problems:
* Can't reuse the drive if it is "bricked". The drives are very secure, and that's good; alas, they are so secure that if you do not have usable fingers available, and the password was changed by a previous owner who left, not only can you not get to the data, you can't reuse the drive. LaCie says that your only recourse is to return the drive to them (at your expense) and they will replace it (if it's still under warranty). Yes, proper password management will avoid this problem, but there should be a way (as with Ironkey encrypted storage hardware) to wipe and reinitialize a storage unit so that it can be reused.
* Only ten fingerprints allowed. Sure, that seems like a lot, but in a corporate environment you will have several people who need to access a drive. Every person who will use the drive should have at least two fingerprints registered, and more is better; this means only 3-5 people can be registered on the biometric reader.
* The drives are slow with USB, compared to the regular LaCie rugged drives (didn't test with Firewire). Yes, encryption adds to overhead. But with software encryption, a faster CPU makes for faster throughput. With the SAFE drives, the CPU speed does not have an appreciable impact on throughput -- on a fast machine, they're still slow drives.
So if you are thinking of this drive for your company, I recommend getting LaCie's regular (orange bumper) rugged drives with a software encryption program such as TrueCrypt (you'll save money, too).
For personal use, these drives would be fine, and the convenience of the biometric reader might balance the extra cost.
TECH NOTE: The typed passwords have a limit of 16 characters. The documentation does not warn you about this, and the software won't keep you from trying to save more than 16 characters. But if you save a 20-character password, and try to use it later, the software won't ignore the last 4 characters you type in, it will just deny you access. You can still get in by typing the first 16 (and ONLY the first 16) characters.
Problems:
* Can't reuse the drive if it is "bricked". The drives are very secure, and that's good; alas, they are so secure that if you do not have usable fingers available, and the password was changed by a previous owner who left, not only can you not get to the data, you can't reuse the drive. LaCie says that your only recourse is to return the drive to them (at your expense) and they will replace it (if it's still under warranty). Yes, proper password management will avoid this problem, but there should be a way (as with Ironkey encrypted storage hardware) to wipe and reinitialize a storage unit so that it can be reused.
* Only ten fingerprints allowed. Sure, that seems like a lot, but in a corporate environment you will have several people who need to access a drive. Every person who will use the drive should have at least two fingerprints registered, and more is better; this means only 3-5 people can be registered on the biometric reader.
* The drives are slow with USB, compared to the regular LaCie rugged drives (didn't test with Firewire). Yes, encryption adds to overhead. But with software encryption, a faster CPU makes for faster throughput. With the SAFE drives, the CPU speed does not have an appreciable impact on throughput -- on a fast machine, they're still slow drives.
So if you are thinking of this drive for your company, I recommend getting LaCie's regular (orange bumper) rugged drives with a software encryption program such as TrueCrypt (you'll save money, too).
For personal use, these drives would be fine, and the convenience of the biometric reader might balance the extra cost.
TECH NOTE: The typed passwords have a limit of 16 characters. The documentation does not warn you about this, and the software won't keep you from trying to save more than 16 characters. But if you save a 20-character password, and try to use it later, the software won't ignore the last 4 characters you type in, it will just deny you access. You can still get in by typing the first 16 (and ONLY the first 16) characters.
The device came broken . The external HDD doesn't mount now on my Mac or on Windows 7. Has a weird anomaly:
-after taking it out from USB+power cord/FW port, I can plug it again and I'm able to add is as a device only after 1h. Doesn't work instantly after it's unplugged and plugged back. Probably a hardware issue
-while is protected (password and fingerprint), I plug the FW port into my MacBook Pro, the LED blinks in green 5 times and then gets red. Instantly, I hear a hard "clicking" noise, just like it would be the reading head of the internal HDD which is giving failures. I cannot use fingerprint sensor because does not work and LaCie told me that my device was broken and needs to be replaced under warranty. How is this possible, on such an expensive and quality-oriented product?:(
I'll return it to Amazon.com tomorrow (will be shipped from Europe) and ask for a refund. They've confirmed me that this would be possible, since I'm not from USA and a re-shipping to my country isn't possible. I've had issues with my HDD since I've bought it first time, but I didn't gave them importance on first 30 days. Now LaCie told me to ship in USA my drive and to pay other moneys for replacement. Stupid policy, I give LaCie 1* for this. Amazon gets 5*, because they've promised that they'll replace my drive and refund the HDD+shipping to USA price, since my HDD is defective.
I'd buy again this drive, but without SAFE (fingerprint sensor and encryption feature) option. I've found it as a total FAIL.
=================
Update 6.04.2011: Amazon.com refunded me the whole cost of this HDD at the price when was bought in December 2010, plus the shipping between Romania to USA. I was amazed how Amazon managed to solve my problem with the defective HDD! Good job, Amazon!
-after taking it out from USB+power cord/FW port, I can plug it again and I'm able to add is as a device only after 1h. Doesn't work instantly after it's unplugged and plugged back. Probably a hardware issue
-while is protected (password and fingerprint), I plug the FW port into my MacBook Pro, the LED blinks in green 5 times and then gets red. Instantly, I hear a hard "clicking" noise, just like it would be the reading head of the internal HDD which is giving failures. I cannot use fingerprint sensor because does not work and LaCie told me that my device was broken and needs to be replaced under warranty. How is this possible, on such an expensive and quality-oriented product?:(
I'll return it to Amazon.com tomorrow (will be shipped from Europe) and ask for a refund. They've confirmed me that this would be possible, since I'm not from USA and a re-shipping to my country isn't possible. I've had issues with my HDD since I've bought it first time, but I didn't gave them importance on first 30 days. Now LaCie told me to ship in USA my drive and to pay other moneys for replacement. Stupid policy, I give LaCie 1* for this. Amazon gets 5*, because they've promised that they'll replace my drive and refund the HDD+shipping to USA price, since my HDD is defective.
I'd buy again this drive, but without SAFE (fingerprint sensor and encryption feature) option. I've found it as a total FAIL.
=================
Update 6.04.2011: Amazon.com refunded me the whole cost of this HDD at the price when was bought in December 2010, plus the shipping between Romania to USA. I was amazed how Amazon managed to solve my problem with the defective HDD! Good job, Amazon!
OMG. Back to the stone age! . Well, I must star saying it is not the first LaCie drive I use. I've used many of them, and I've always recommended the brand to my customers. LaCie almost always work great and they always look very nice. I really respect the brand.Now... this thing is awfully SLOW. As a technician, I always try to blame the user (me, in this case) so I run through the manual again, reinitialized the unit again, tried with a different port, USB, FireWire... nothing. It is the encryption engine. It is so damn slow that at first you think the disk is broken.It may be ok if your files are small, and you put them one by one in the unit. But if you drag a 20Gb folder on it, it's nap time! it takes about 1 hour to move that amount of data into the rugged safe. It is like the old times when we use a 33.6 modem to download a file.Now, if you are happy waiting I have some more great news: If, in the middle of a transfer, you receive a disk full message, check if there is no files bigger than 4Gb, because if you inadvertently clicked in OK instead of CANCEL during the last step of the installation, your disk is now compatible with PC, which means it is formatted in FAT32 so it doesn't support files bigger than 4Gbso you get the error dialog telling you that there is no more space in the disk. No, there is no way to format it NTFS.This guys got the gizmo to store some sensitive data and I was meant to be the one to make the transfer. After 4 or 5 hours of zen waiting I gave up and asked for a standard drive encrypted by software, as always.This disk is useless for big files, even if formatted for mac only. That doesn't affect the transfer slowness.
Please Mount . It takes multiple tries to mount this thing. I use the firewire 800 on my mac. I also had to try thee times before it successfully set up after I bought it.
I do not suggest this drive to anyone. Unless, of course you're storing information THAT private. And REALLY needs this encryption.
I have tried multiple cables. I have not, however, used the USB port. But at the same time, even if it did mount easier, I have no use for USB. I need a faster connection for music editing.
The finger swipe works, but only after it successfully calibrates after 3 or 4 tries. (Which includes having to unplug the drive without ejecting it due to it locking up from an unsuccessful try)
I do not suggest this drive to anyone. Unless, of course you're storing information THAT private. And REALLY needs this encryption.
I have tried multiple cables. I have not, however, used the USB port. But at the same time, even if it did mount easier, I have no use for USB. I need a faster connection for music editing.
The finger swipe works, but only after it successfully calibrates after 3 or 4 tries. (Which includes having to unplug the drive without ejecting it due to it locking up from an unsuccessful try)
DO NOT BUY!!! . Purchased two weeks ago and transfer rate was 3-6 times slower than my current iomega portable drive that I use to back up my MacBook Pro. Contacted the help center and went through a protracted testing of the drive using multiple computers, multiple connections, dozens of different file types, re-formatting the drive and then repeating again. Throughout the process I continually commented that the drive was defective, the help center continually responded that it was either the connector or my computer(s) (i.e.. not enough memory, file problems etc.). After 1 week of this and about 6 hours of my time they said they would look at. When they received it they sent out a new one immediately (I take this as an omission that the drive was defective - something they never did omit). Got the new drive and same problem. I have been using time machine to backup about 400GB, I am now on hour 48 with 170GB to go. I don't think the first drive was defective ... the whole line is .... DO NOT BUY, not only will the drive perform poorly but you will spend the next week product testing for free.
Product Image
Feature LaCie Rugged All-Terrain SAFE 500 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 800 Portable External Hard Drive 301491
- Biometric authentication: up to ten users
- 128-bit AES hardware encryption for full data protection
- Bus-powered and compatible with Mac and PC
- Shock-proof rugged design
- Design by Neil Poulton
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Product Details
EAN : 0093053776060UPC : 093053776060
MPN : 301491
Brand : LaCie
Weight : 2 pounds
Height : 3 inches
Length : 9 inches
Width : 8 inches
Binding : Personal Computers
Format : CD-ROM
Hardware Platform : PC
Manufacturer : Lacie
Model : 301491
Operating System : Windows
Platform : Windows
Publisher : Lacie
Size : 500 GB
SKU : 4573054
Studio : Lacie
Where To Buy
You can buy LaCie Rugged All-Terrain SAFE 500 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 800 Portable External Hard Drive 301491 on Amazon . Click here to Read More
