Designed with professionals in mind—from filmmakers to photographers to musicians—the $529.99 LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle is aimed at anyone who works in the field and produces large amounts of data they can't afford to lose. And it does that job well enough to be our new Editors' Choice for rugged external hard drives. The crush-resistant gray brushed-aluminum case actually houses two physical drives, with RAID settings allowing either an 8TB capacity and fast performance, or a safer 4TB with a copy of each file on each drive. The unit also meets the IP54 spec for dust and water resistance, and it is rated to survive a 4-foot fall. As a final touch, it fits easily in a gear bag or in a padded overnight express envelope to let pros send files to the office or studio when data connections are slow or non-existent.
It's All in the Name: RAID, Plus Rugged
The Rugged RAID Shuttle fits right in with LaCie's line of Rugged drives, which has a well-earned reputation for reliability. Available in an 8TB capacity only, the unit looks like a single hard drive to your OS. But the combination of form factor, gray case, and silicone protective bumper around the edge—the same orange color as a weatherproof outdoor extension cord—makes it look like nothing so much as a small tablet for children, waiting to be powered on. Roughly the size and shape of a 5.25-inch internal drive, at 1.1 by 6.8 by 6 inches, it weighs 2.1 pounds. Inside the case are two platter-based 5,400rpm Seagate Barracuda drives, a matched set of 2.5-inch 4TB drives side by side.
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As shipped, the unit is set to RAID 0. In addition to giving you access to 8TB of storage, this setting also gives you a performance boost compared with using either drive by itself. When writing to disk, for example, RAID 0 can write concurrently to the second drive when a disk write would otherwise have to queue up and wait for a single drive to be ready to accept more data. The RAID 1 setting offers only half as much storage as well as slower performance, but the second drive automatically mirrors the first. If either drive gets damaged, you'll have a second copy of every file.
Which brings us to the "Rugged" part of the name. Quite simply, the Rugged RAID Shuttle is designed to survive conditions that could trash your data. In addition to meeting IP54 standards for dust and water resistance (see our explainer on ruggedization ratings for a discussion of what the numbers mean) and being shock-resistant to drops up to 4 feet, it's also rated as crush-resistant enough to stand up to being run over by a 2,205-pound vehicle.
The shock resistance comes courtesy of the silicone bumper, combined with the solid case and internal shock mounts. Of course, no platter-based drive can be as shock-resistant as an SSD, which not only lacks platters and delicate drive heads to damage, but has lower mass to generate less kinetic energy during a fall. But the Rugged RAID Shuttle scores well by hard drive standards. For example, both it and the G-Tech ArmorATD are rated to survive a 4-foot drop, but the ArmorATD's rating is for carpeted concrete rather than simply concrete, and its case is pressure-resistant up to only 1,000 pounds. Keep in mind, too, that setting the LaCie drive to RAID 1 effectively increases ruggedness, by ensuring that you can destroy one drive completely and still have all your data on the other.
The orange bumper on the Rugged RAID Shuttle includes a tab to cover the power connector, and the uncovered USB-C connector is rated at IP54 itself, so the drive should easily survive a small splash of water or being carried in the rain. However, the IP54 spec doesn't cover immersion. If you're working where you might drop the drive into a lake or even a puddle, you might want to consider an external hard drive with a higher rating, like the IP68-rated ADATA HD830, or one of LaCie's external SSDs, like the IP67-rated Rugged SSD Pro.
A Talented Toolkit, and Other Features
The drive comes formatted in the exFAT style by default, so it will work with both PCs and Macs. If you won't be moving it between different kinds of computers, you can format it in your OS's native format (say, NTFS for Windows, or HFS+ for Macs).
LaCie ships the unit with two cables. One has a USB Type-C connector at each end, the other a USB Type-C-to-Type-A. Also in the box is a power block with interchangeable plug modules for a variety of domestic and foreign power outlets. The power block is needed only when connected to ports of the USB 3.0 variety or lower, which can't supply adequate juice over the USB bus to run the drives. Connect to such a port, and a status light comes on to tell you to plug the power adapter into an outlet. A second LED indicates disk activity.
Also included with the drive is the downloadable LaCie RAID Manager and LaCie Toolkit, a three-year warranty, and three years of Rescue Data Recovery Services. The RAID Manager lets you switch the drive between RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes as well as update firmware. Changing the setting requires little more than loading the program, choosing Modify, and choosing the RAID setting you want. The change will format the drives, so you need to back up any data first, but the app warns you before it does anything and makes you poke a recessed button with a paper clip to confirm you mean it.
The ToolKit offers several welcome utilities. Seagate Encryption lets you create a password to encrypt all data on the LaCie drive. The Mirror option lets you create Mirror folders on the LaCie drive and your computer's drive, then automatically syncs each folder to the other when you move files to or delete them from either one. The Backup and Restore tools, available for Windows only, let you define full or partial backups to run continuously, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or one time only.
Testing: RAID 0 Means Fast (Mostly)
We compared the Rugged RAID Shuttle to several platter-based portable hard drives, including the budget-minded WD Elements, the Editors' Choice Seagate Backup Ultra Touch, the equally rugged G-Tech ArmorATD mentioned earlier, and the even more rugged ADATA HD830. Note that we tested all of those drives in 2TB versions, although other capacities are available for each. However, the key difference for performance between any of them and the LaCie drive is that none of the others supports RAID, and we tested the LaCie drive using its default RAID 0 setting. On our benchmark tests, which simulate typical operations on both PCs and Macs, the Rugged RAID Shuttle outpaced the field more often than not, in some cases leaving the competition in the dust.
For PC tests, we used our standard Intel X299-based storage testbed, which is equipped with a motherboard-hosted USB 3.1 Gen 2 USB-C port. For Mac tests, we used a 2016 MacBook Pro and tested the drive over one of the combined USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports using the bundled USB Type-C cable.
PCMark 7 Secondary Storage Test
The PCMark7 Secondary Storage subtest evaluates drive speed with a proprietary score. The test uses a mix of simulated workloads that include a Windows Defender scan, video editing tasks, and application launches.
This is one of only two scores where the Rugged RAID Shuttle didn't shine. It came in basically tied for last place with the Seagate drive, with a score that was only about 70 percent of the ADATA HD830 and WD Elements drive's scores and only about 60 percent of the G-Tech ArmorATD score.
Crystal DiskMark
Crystal DiskMark tests sequential read and write speeds (straight-line transfers of contiguous data), which is a best-case scenario for platter units, and theoretically an even better-case scenario for a RAID 0 drive.
The Sequential Read results are exactly what we expected, with the RAID 0-equipped Rugged RAID Shuttle delivering more than twice the performance of the next fastest drive. But on the sequential write test, it turned in such a low score that we're not reporting it because we don't believe it's valid, particularly since the drive scored well on other tests that involve writing to disk. The problem could well have something to do with Crystal DiskMark specifically and how it interacts with a RAID 0 drive. All four of the comparison drives were closely matched on both the Read and Write tests, delivering speeds that varied by only a few megabytes per second.
PCMag Folder Transfer Test
We run our drag-and-drop Folder Transfer Test on our MacBook Pro laptop. The test consists of copying our standard 1.2GB folder from testbed to drive, and is one of the disk write tests where the Rugged RAID Shuttle delivered the best performance in the group.
The LaCie drive was only 3 seconds faster than the two drives that tied for second, and only 5 seconds faster than the slowest in the group, which is enough to notice, but not enough to matter much. On the other hand, the results imply that if you're copying folders with multiple gigabytes of data, you will see a larger, and more significant, difference for real-world use.
BlackMagic 3.1 Disk Speed Test
The LaCie drive turned in impressive performance on the MacBook Pro with the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test utility, which measures a drive's throughput for playback of various video formats.
On both Disk Read and Disk Write tests, the Rugged RAID Shuttle's measured result was more than double the score for the next fastest drive. The ArmorATD and the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra essentially tied for a distant second place, and they were only a few megabytes per second faster than the WD Elements and the ADATA HD830.
High Capacity, Rugged, Fast, and Encrypted
In addition to offering the highest capacity of any drive in LaCie's Rugged line, the LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle delivers a balance of performance, capacity, and data protection—both in the form of physical ruggedness and the optional RAID 1 setting for data redundancy—that is simply unmatched at this writing in a portable drive. You can find both external hard drives (such as the ADATA HD830) and external SSDs (example: LaCie's own Rugged SSD Pro) with higher ratings for dust and water resistance, and SSDs will deliver faster performance. But note that both of those drives have far lower capacities, neither supports RAID, and the 2TB version of the Rugged SSD Pro costs more than the 8TB Rugged RAID Shuttle.
If you simply must have a higher level of ruggedness or are shopping under stringent budget constraints, you'll want to look at other models in our ruggedized drive roundup. But if you can make good use of an 8TB capacity combined with the Rugged RAID Shuttle's other features (RAID support, encryption, easy shippability), it's easier to justify the price per gigabyte. At this writing, at least, you won't find this constellation of features elsewhere.
LaCie's two-drive Rugged RAID Shuttle offers the choice of high capacity and fast performance (in striped mode), or of half the capacity with all data mirrored on the second disk. It's ideal for anyone who works in the field and produces oodles of data.
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