LaCie Rugged 500GB esata drive

Got the drive from B&H today. Plugged into the desktop (based on MSI motherboard) that has USB/eSATA combo port (power esata). Came up in a couple of seconds as a new ATA drive.

Moved it over to HP dv7-3160us laptop that also has the combo port. Came in a few seconds as a new ATA drive.

So if you have a desktop or laptop with esata or combo drive, there is now a commerical product for backups that is portable. Also if you have been on a long trip and want to move hundreds of GBs of photos from the laptop to the desktop....moving them on an esata drive is an option.

Very much like the single flexible power esata cable instead of an esata plus a USB cable (to supply power) or an an esata cable plus an external power supply.

The drive inside is a Hitachi 7200rpm unit. So far, so good!


-------a few minutes later:

Just did a sustained write test. I used a 16GB Sandisk 60MB card with 9GB folder of photos plugged into Lexar expresscard reader as the data source. Writing to the LACie I got an average transfer of 55MB. When writing to C drive (5400rpm) the average transfer speed was 46MB.

Link? Price?

I use something similar, the Transcend Storejet 500gb and I have accidently drop tested it several times and it still works.

It doesn't have firewire connection that the Lacie does, but it's more compact and cheaper.

http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …i=rev#anchorToR​eadReviews

If you laptop has eSATA port that is a 3GB pipe...same as used for the internal SATA drives. It is much faster than USB 2, FW400 or FW800. The only thing faster may be USB 3. Using eSATA or USB 3....any delays will be the read/write speed of the drives...not bottlenecks in the pipe to/from the drive.

http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …410-REG/LaCie_301905.html