The Lacie Rugged Safe drive is available in 500GB and 1TB and uses 128bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) hardware encryption with Fingerprint Scanner Technology to secure any data stored on the device.
Whats in the Box
- LaCie Rugged Safe (500GB or 1TB)
- LaCie SAFE Utilities (preloaded on the device)
- LaCie Backup Assistant (Windows and Mac) (preloaded on the device)
- FireWire 800 (9-to-9 pin) cable
- FireWire 800 to 400 cable
- Hi-Speed USB 2.0 cable (USB 1.1 compatible)
- USB power-sharing cable
- Lacie Software CD
- Quick Start Guide
Software and Setup
The Lacie Rugged Safe drive comes Pre-Loaded with the Lacie Safe Manager Software included on a partition on the device however I would recommend that you download and install the latest version of the Lacie Safe Manager Software to setup your device from the link below.
http://www.lacie.com/uk/support/drivers/driver.htm?id=10194
The Lacie Safe Manager Software allows you to registry your Administrator account and other users it has a maximum of Ten Fingerprints from different users as when creating an account on the Lacie Rugged Safe you are required to registry at least one Fingerprint scan.
Hard Drive Format
To allow Read and Write Access of the drive on both Mac OS X and Windows (XP onwards) you will be required to default the format to FAT32. You can however use your computers own disk utility formatting tools to format it into the format of your choice such as NTFS (for Windows XP onwards) or HFS+ (for Mac OS X) if you wish to increase performance.
Accessing your Data
You do not need to install the software on any other computer after you have first configured/Initialized the hard drive for your use as when you plug it into any computer or for example a XBOX360 you can swipe your finger and the light on the device turns Green from red indicating that the secure data is available to be accessed. To secure the Lacie Rugged Safe Drive you eject the hard drive in the usual manner for your Operating System and then Swipe your registered finger the light on the device changes from Green to Red indicating to you that the data on the device is secure. On a XBOX 360 you can swipe the Fingerprint scanner on the device a couple of times and it again secures the device turning the light Red.
You can however unlock the secure data without using the finger print scanner but by using your Username and password and the Lacie Manager Software that you have installed to the pc or mac.
Hardware
The enclosure of the device is made from Aluminum and Plastic with a rubber bumper sleeve around the middle. I am guessing The “Rugged” Status comes from the way in which the hard drive is protected with Internal Anti-shock Rubber Bumpers within the enclosure. Compared to other Rugged Edition hard drives from Lacie I would say that the Fingerprint Scanner takes away some of the protection of the device however the scanner itself is recessed into the enclosure so any damage of it would be very doubtful under normal use – for example taking in a laptop bag or on your desk. (Maybe if you hit it of the corner of the desk you could damage it, but its next to impossible). If you are worried about damage during normal wear and tear then you can buy the Lacie Cozy 2.5in Hard-case for your Lacie Rugged Safe device.
The only form of damage I could think of under normal use would be damage caused by Dirt and Grease from ones digits.
The Fingerprint Scanner allows quick swiping and access to the data drive if you have a registered account. I have tried it with other digits on my hands and it only recognizes the fingerprint that had been registered and appears there is no Ghosting from previous swipes, as it uses a senor slip of the capacitance fingerprint scanner type or Solid State as Lacie refers to it (similar to UPEK scanners and laptop fingerprint scanner) rather then the optical fingerprint scanner type that Microsoft used in their range of devices released in 2004.
Like some other LaCie hard drives with Firewire connections, you can daisy chain them together for the ability of only using one port on your computer, however I would say that you would have to keep moving the top LaCie Rugged Safe to access the bottom one to swipe your finger as the fingerprint scanner would not be accessible, if you stack them.
Alternatives
There are different technologies for securing data on hard drives such as the Freecom Secure Hard drives (both desktop and portable editions) that use RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) card Technology similar to what your Security Pass in work allows you through secure doors. There is also the Data Locker Hard drive (portable) range that uses Pin access that is entered directly into the enclosure.
Possible Disadvantages
Compared to an Ironkey Device there appears to be no way for Business users or rather their IT Administrators / Information Managers to remotely destroy the device if the device is stolen or lost. The Lack of this remote destruct shouldn’t worry to many end users as the AES has properly encrypted the drive. Without the encryption key it will just appear as random garbage if someone was enable to force mount the data partition.
i want to purchase (LACIE RUGGED SAFE) how and where can i buy.
You can purchase the Lacie Rugged Safe from Apple Online and their Retail Stores and Amazon.
Is it PLUG and PLAY?
Or required to use the electric power to Hard Disk?
what model of hard drive they have inside?
Typically Seagate