Here is yet another LaCie hard drive review for you. This time it is the LaCie Minimus 2TB, which LaCie claims is the “perfect choice for users that enjoy their terabytes as much as their desk space.” Let’s find out how perfect it truly is.
Jump to:
– Design and Build
– Size and Weight
– Connectivity
– Speed/Benchmarks
– What’s inside the Box
– What other buyers are saying
– Conclusion
Design and Build
The LaCie Minimus is another stunning minimalist piece of hardware designed by LaCie. It is remarkably tiny and complemented beautifully by a tough protective brushed aluminium. The use of metal is highly popular in modern external hard drives to improve the dissipation of heat and life span of the hard. Not to mention it is 100% recyclable if you ever decide to upgrade in the future. The drive has nothing but the LaCie logo on the front face and the connectors on the back. The lovely metal case does not show any fingerprints allowing you to feel it up whenever you want but leaving no trace. The drive itself also leaves no prints on the surface it stands on thanks to two long rubber feet.
The only criticism for the design is that the edges of the drive are slightly sharp and if it were to fall on your foot… suffice to say your foot would lose the battle. Overall the drive feels well-built and sturdy while looking very attractive and modern.
Size and Weight
This is a 3.5″ external hard drive. It is one of the smaller 3.5″ drives out there with the following dimensions: 6.8 x 4.4 x 1.2 inches / 20 x 13.7 x 8.6 cm and weighing 1.9 pounds / 848 g.
Connectivity
The LaCie Minimus drive requires a power supply and only uses USB as its computer interface cable. Fortunately it is a USB 3.0 port and is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, which means that it will work on any computer system with a USB port. Other than that it has a nice circular on/off button to ensure you can save energy when not in use. It is also more comfortable than what most other external hard drives use – a Switch.
Speed/Benchmarks
Using USB 3.0 the read and write speeds are not quite as fast as competing USB 3.0 drive, however, they are still considerably faster than USB 2.0.
During our tests the reading speeds seemed to average at around 103 MB/s and the write speeds averaged at around 89 MB/s. Pretty darn good. Another thing to note is that the sound levels when transferring large files always remained relatively low which was very impressive and pleasant.
What comes inside the box?
Inside your box you will find:
1x LaCie Minimus desktop drive
1x USB 3.0 cable (USB 2.0 compatible)
1x power supply
1x Quick Installation Guide
The hard drive also comes with pre-installed software called ‘LaCie Setup Assistant Software’ and is pre-installed on a small separate partition on the drive. The first time you plug your hard drive in the software will run and ask you how you want to format your hard drive. Follow the simple steps and the software will quickly format your new hard drive. Hard drive manufacturers often add their own software hoping to help their users, but more often than not they just annoy them. In this case, we have to say that the software is a little bit useless as most people would prefer the drive to come empty and formatted in NTFS.
Conclusion
Pros
- Excellent minimalist design
- Aluminium casing feels strong and compact
- Very quiet
Cons
- High RRP that is softened by the excellent Amazon price
- Slightly sharp edges on the design
- Only uses USB 3.0
In conclusion, the LaCie Minimus is a decent drive that looks great. The lack of noise is quite impressive as was the build quality. The transfer speeds are decent, but the lack of interface connectors, aside from the USB, was disappointing considering it is a 3.5″ drive. You can also find get higher transfer speeds in similarly priced external hard drives.
Bottom line: Good drive but not really recommended as there are better external hard drives with 2TB of space on the market for even better value.
