

The new models are all compact, portable drives, although they offer a number of different designs and features. Seagate has recently overhauled the Backup Plus range, putting more emphasis on portable drives for laptop users. That’s our only complaint, though, and the Mobile Drive provides good performance, with write and read speeds both averaging out at 132MB/s in our tests – almost identical to the Rugged Secure drives – while backing up a 5GB batch of iTunes songs took exactly one minute.
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Our only complaint here is that LaCie’s skimpy manual doesn’t provide much information about the ToolKit app, or the various formatting options for the drive, simply leaving you to wade through a bunch of FAQ files on its website. This ensures that your backups are always up to date with the most recent versions of your files (whereas Time Machine still leaves a one-hour gap between backups). Any folder that is ‘mirrored’ is automatically backed up and updated as soon as you make any changes to any file within that folder. This is a good option if you use your Mac at work, and have individual projects organised in their own folders.

The drives can be used with Time Machine for Mac backups, but LaCie’s ToolKit app also allows you to ‘mirror’ individual folders. The Mobile Drive has a single USB-C port on the back, but LaCie includes cables for both USB-C and the older USB 3.0, so you can use the drive with any Mac or PC. There’s also a 4TB model, which is the same size and weight, but slightly less expensive. The 5TB model is twice as heavy and twice as thick (20mm), and costs more. Those two drives measure just 10mm thick, 88mm wide and 122mm long, and weigh a more modest 200g. There are smaller and lighter alternatives, though, depending on how much storage you need. The ‘diamond cut’ design simply refers to the exaggerated angular edges and corners looks aside, the aluminium casing feels really sturdy – in fact, the 5TB model that we tested weighs in at 400g, and could give someone a serious concussion if you whacked them over the head with it. They’re available in two colours: ‘moon silver’ and, of course, ‘space grey’ that is intended to match the latest Mac models. Rather than the neon-orange rubber bumper of the Rugged drives, the new Mobile Drives are wrapped in smart aluminium. LaCie’s range of Mobile Drives provide a much wider range of options, as well as a ‘diamond cut’ design.
