If you have never seen a LaCie Mobile in person before you could easily be forgiven for thinking it is anything but a portable storage solution. Instead you may think it is a fancy Raspberry Pi, an oddball WiFi router… or just about anything other than USB storage. That is what LaCie made their bones on, and that is why the LaCie Mobile Secure is so fancy looking.
Make no mistake, the combination of two thick aluminum sheets with a fancy looking radiator sandwiched between them means the LaCie is not just there to look pretty. Instead it lives in that sweet spot where function meets form as all that metal is a great heatsink… and shield against life’s bumps and bruises. Bumps and bruises that over the years has killed many a plastic clad storage device on us. This one-two-three combination makes the Mobile Drive Secure rather unique in a good way… and not a “ why bless your heart! Ain’t you just special” way.
This should come as no surprise as this is the exact same chassis as the ‘last gen’ came clad in. To us this is not merely a good thing, it is a great thing. This is a device that you can along with you on a Fortune 50 level contract, a photoshoot, or even just over to your friends house in a modern version of Ye Olde Sneaker Net… and not once feel like your choice is out of place. Attention getting? Yes. Attention getting in a bad way? No.
The only major pet-peeve we have with the Mobile line is LaCie does not take the time, or invest the effort, into Ingress Protection/International Protection certification. To be blunt, if LaCie included a silicon gasket between the radiator and top/bottom plates as well as a rubber USB port cap there is very little doubt in our minds that it would easily meet IP54 standards. Probably even higher IP67 standards.
All that however would reposition the Mobile Drive Secure into the ‘rugged’ side of things and thus could easily cost LaCie sales of their more expensive rugged line. Especially with how chunky the rugged models are compared to the Mobile Drive Secure line. As you can see, it may not be in the ‘thumb drive’ territory in overall dimensions… but in thickness it is. That too is one of things that make the Mobile Drive Secure series standout from the typical 2.5-inch HDD based USB storage device: durability and practicality.
Also like previous generation of Mobile Drive’s shucking the Mobile Drive Secure is neither difficult nor easy. It is easier than some as you simply have to use two spudgers to lever the top (or bottom) plate up and away from the radiator central portion. It is difficult because it may (once again) rely upon polymer “snap” locks… but they are surprisingly robust. So it does take more force than you would think to unlock each one. Thus many will be fooled into thinking this is not the way to shuck a Mobile Drive Secure.
On the positive side, if you do shuck it, a line of silicon between the rad and its two plates can indeed further increase the shock absorption this unit offers. Of course, a layer of silicon would be even better (and easy to do). Once again, this is not a rugged model but if you do drop it the internal padding will absorb a surprisingly large amount energy before killing the HDD… but it can easily be upgraded to near rugged levels. Upgraded and still look a work of art and not the tool it actually is. Food for thought if nothing else.
In this vein LaCie has done a rather decent job of reducing energy transfer… both ways. Each corner of the internal drive is clad in a rubbed clad bolt that not only eliminates a good chunk of vibration induced noise but allows the 2.5-inch drive to ‘float’ inside said metal chassis.
Also nice to see, and once again the same as the 2022 refresh generation, the internals come mostly covered in foil EMI tape over a secondary layer of protective tape. This keeps the tiny daughter card safe and securely in place even if the drive gets knocked around while you travel to and from a jobsite. The controller is also basically the same, albeit the latest revision of the ASM225 series. We have no issues with either of these ‘carry overs’.
The ASMedia 200-series is a proven series with now mature firmware. In other words it is more than enough to handle any single HDD bandwidth’s demands. The same is true for the “tape over tape” mounting method as it is a proven combination that may not be as secure as screws… but it is more than ‘good enough’ outside of a warzone (and at that point you are already well into the ‘rugged’ category).
This brings us the hard disk drive… and what separates a standard LaCie Mobile Drive from a Mobile Drive Secure. To be precise, the last time we looked at the Mobile Drive series the non-Secure version made use of a Seagate Mobile HDD. A decent choice with excellent bit-density and decent performance. For the new Mobile Drive Secure Seagate has opted for a Seagate Barracuda. Specifically, a Self-Encrypting Drive variant of the venerable 2.5-inch ‘Cuda line. Basically with SED options the onboard controller (when told to) auto-magically encrypts/decrypts all data using AES 256 cipher. As we will show in the testing portion this change nets buyers basically unbreakably encrypted data without any loss of performance compared to the standard Mobile Drive line.
Equally impressive to actually get this drive to encrypt or decrypt its data all you need do is download the LaCie Toolkit (it sadly is no longer on the drive from the factory), install it, click a single box, set a password… and that is it. Furthermore, and unlike most, this toolkit is worth the data and time to install it even if you don’t care about SED. With it you can backup specific files, folders, even drives automatically. Better still is you can configure it to auto-copy any or all of the above via mirroring, which uses MS or Apple’s Shadow Copy (aka ‘VSS’) technology that can backup files even when they are in use. While this free application will never replace Acronis, for a freebie it is a nice little bonus feature that does help offset some of the asking price.
Overall the Mobile Drive Secure may not be as groundbreaking a model as its 2022 edition were, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. The latest LaCie Mobile HDD blueprint is a winning one and the minor to moderate internal changes are all a net positive. Now, if they would only stop using Shingle Magnetic Recording technology and go back to an old-school PMR/CMR based drive we would be truly happy. We say this SMR is slower at both reads and writes than PMR… and LaCie had gone back to their roots the Mobile Drive Secure would be faster than the non-Secure model we previously looked at. As such, there is still room for improvement with the latest and greatest Mobile Drive design.
