Rugged portable harddrive?

[Per Martinsson]

Dear friends,

I'm looking for a good rugged portable hard drive of 500 GB for field use.

My options seems to be between;

LaCie rugged All-terrain (142 x 90 x 27.5 mm/ 250 grams)
or
Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile (134 x 80 x 19 mm/ 206 grams)

The Transcend is a little bit smaller and lighter than the LaCie and Transcend has passed the US Military “Drop-test”.
Review: http://livingdigitalindia.ciol.com/Archive...0_Archives.aspx
But the drop test doesn't appear to be much of a fall; 76 cm onto plywood on top of concrete.


Another non scientific "test" can be found here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology...ws/4275478.html

I have seen Iomega have a few options but no 500 GB.

Anyone having experience to share and recommendations for me?

Thanks.

[Bob Steer]

There was a report in one of the magazines in the past year doing testing on several portable external hard drives including a drop test and the LaCie Rugged faired quite well in comparison to the others tested. If my memory serves me right the rugged did survive a 15' drop which was impressive. I believe it faired the best or 2nd best of the ones tested (which was about a half dozen)

I have several LaCie Rugged external HD including the 500 gig and found them to be quite reliable and very capable of handling anything field work could throw at it (within reason). They are a little bigger in size to some but that is part of rugged design.

Hope that helps.

Sorry I can't remember the name of the magazine that reviewed them but maybe someone else may remember.

Bob