I was told that LaCie made "generic" hard drives. Meaning that you don't know about the make of the actual hardware inside the frame containing the external hard drive. But I must say that, so far this machine works great This is the third one I purchased.

I purchased this drive in March of 2015 for my girlfriend, and it sat on her desk as served as storage for her videos and recorded music (she is a working musician). The drive worked without issue for several months, until this month (August 2015), when the drive refused to spin up.

Drive enclosure is metal, with a plastic caddy and a pretty good SATA->USB interface; Speeds were reasonable; Rubber bumper is well made and seems like it would serve it's purpose

I am giving this drive one star due to LaCie's choice of drive vendor, Seagate, in this case; Please read the "other thoughts" section for an explanation

This is a terrific little hard drive. I work from home, but also travel a lot and so I needed something that I can plug into my iMac in my studio, but also my MacBook when I am on the road - the rubber housing makes this EHD bullet proof!

Durable; Lightweight; Plug and play

The LaCie Rugged Mini is a speedy USB 3.0 drive that will shrug off a taxing daily commute in a clumsy student's backpack. But it's not ideal for a six-week Outward Bound adventure on the Ross Ice Shelf.

Speedy performance for a spinning drive; Some ruggedized protection; Decent price per gigabyte; Uses USB 3.0 interface.

Ruggedized casing is comparatively lightweight; Third-party online storage is pricey

Rugged reliable. This is exactly what the doctor ordered for those of us who travel. It is protected from shocks. great size and speed. Took a very short period of time to back up my hard drive from my Air and was extremely robust. Good price point as well. Overall very satisfied!

I had an old Lacie Rugged 320 GB drive for several years prior to buying this one. Now I have two, and it's actually impressive to see how the Rugged evolved in the past few years. I have the 1 TB Rugged mini, and it's smaller and even feels sturdier than its predecessor.

compact; easy to use

all good

Great drive and a good price. Unable to use USB 3 yet but still performs.

I have two of these for my photos in conjunction with Lightroom, one for backup to keep in second location. I love it's durability and portabilty.

an unacceptable percentage of the minis simply stop working. One day, you plug in the device, and it just starts clicking. The information cannot be retrieved....poof. In one case, I put the information on two minis, because I always back things up in 2 or 3 spots...and both minis died.

When I had an old MacBook Pro, I had to transfer a lot of data from my hard drive to an external. USB 2.0 is fine, but I needed *anything* that was quicker. FireWire was the only choice I had, and with the secondary USB 3.0 port, this was good for looking into a future computer with faster transfer...