Rugged external SSD recommendations

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I'm looking to get an external SSD drive to take away with me soon to edit with using LR, and wanted recommendations?

The Lacie rugged SSD with thunderbolt looks good, but remember reading in the past some issues with Lacie drives failing on people? Is this still the case?

The rugged thing appeals as i'd be carrying it around with me whilst out shooting as i don't want to leave it in the hotel room, and SSD due to less moving parts.

Thanks for any thoughts on this!
 
I would avoid Lacie as they are just box makers, i.e. they just put other manufacturers devices in the oh so very pretty boxes they create. The consequence of this is as a box maker rather than a proper electronics company they do not always understand the electrical, thermal limits of the devices they put in their pretty boxes hence the reports of failures.


The problem with making rugged external drives is that the rubber & plastic materials used as shock absorbers are usually very good thermal insulators consequently the drives inside will get hotter than in a regular enclosure.

You could buy regular external SSD drives and buy padded cases to be used when transporting the external SSSD's and remove them from the case when in use to prevent overheating when the drives are powered on and in use.
 
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Depending upon your budget...although they are a bit pricey I would recommend the Angelbird SSD2go series. The design of them is really well thought out and of high quality; they are designed from the ground up for portable use. Some of their drives even include a little UPS to help ensure the drive is shut down safely in the event of an interruption in power, which is a nice little feature. They have a rather long winded but honest video on Youtube somewhere demonstrating the ruggedness of one of their drives (throwing it around, running it over then stress testing it etc... :D) i can find it if you'd like.

On the Lacie's I would tend to share the opinion mentioned already: they are mediocre drives and interfaces in pretty boxes.

Other good alternatives would be ioSafe (although some of their products can be difficult to get in the UK), or make your own with a decent 2.5" SSD and a good quality enclosure.
 
Agree on the LaCie points above. They're built by designers, not engineers.
How big does it have to be? I'd be tempted by a USB 3.0 Corsair Survivor. Or a GTX.
 
Ain't ssd more reliable and solid then traditional hdd? Don't think they need any paddings etc!
 
Ain't ssd more reliable and solid then traditional hdd? Don't think they need any paddings etc!
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SSD are far less likely to be adversely affected by impact than a regular mechanical hard disk but they are not totally shock proof.
 
jonneymendoza said:
Ain't ssd more reliable and solid then traditional hdd? Don't think they need any paddings etc!
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Within the aspect of portability, yes they are definitely better suited being on the move than mechanical HDDs, I don't think "padding" is going to help an SSD much either, it's better to have it mounted in a rugged aluminium chassis to help dissipate heat, shock is less likely to kill it than heat IMHO. My suspicions are that SSDs are probably more sensitive to problems relating to the SATA to USB/Thunderbolt interface & power for external use though (e.g. if the interface/enclosure has not been designed with SSDs in mind). But that's just my speculation.
 
iv'e seen some pretty cheap usb 3 pen drives recently which have quite reasonable transfer speeds and would be reasonably robust

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produ...Product/partNumber/3589573.htm&referrer=COJUN

i bought the wife a 32 gig version of the above for the car and for the money the transfer speeds in real use are quite respectable

or if you want bigger

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3561869.htm


not sure i would bother with SSD there might be a speed advantage but through a laptop i doubt it would be that significant wired externally
the size of pendrives make them a little more inviting for portable use for me
 
The bigger the SSD he quicker the read and write speeds - im not sure id trust my photos to a pen drive!
 
Overexposed said:
The bigger the SSD he quicker the read and write speeds - im not sure id trust my photos to a pen drive!
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i dunno pen drives are pretty reliable nowadays
the only thing that used to put me off pen drives was the speed but with usb 3 being quite common and good prices for fairly large capacity i think it's a convenient storage media because of the sheer size
i have a 64gig pen drive about the size of a thumbnail on my key ring, big enough for most things

considering the price of 128gig SSD there are usb 3 pen drive with twice the capacity for the same price in a much smaller package
out of the 2 i would choose the pen drive but it's not the choice for everyone
 
I don't actually think that you can compare usb 3 to SSD - I've recently upgraded to SSD on my mac and its blisteringly quick - I think the biggest issue is the connection from SSD to the pc as usb would be wasted anything above such as firewire starts to get expensive
 
Overexposed said:
I don't actually think that you can compare usb 3 to SSD - I've recently upgraded to SSD on my mac and its blisteringly quick - I think the biggest issue is the connection from SSD to the pc as usb would be wasted anything above such as firewire starts to get expensive
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i agree there is no comparison when SSD is connected via it's sata port directly to a pc / mac iv'e been using a couple of 120 gig SSD's in my pc for the last 3/4 years but once you start connecting them externally although they will still read n write faster than the average usb 3 pen drive things do start to slow down and for moving large chunks of data quickly it's an ideal choice but just for a means of storage and editing in a conveniently small robust package i think it's a bit of a waste

to be honest i don't use either when on holiday i use an i7 laptop and an external usb 3 500 gig portable drive with no issues, the drive is used as a second storage media ( backup ) just in case but i don't carry it around with me if i was to carry it i would choose a pen drive for sheer convenience because of it's small size
if speed is the ultimate goal SSD would be the way to go but we have to bear in mind the transfer speed from the card to the device in the first place which isn't usually on par with usb 3
 
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Everything I've read says SSd isn't great for portable drives in terms of speed but the lack of moving parts makes them more robust
 
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