4 TB Drive to Ship Later This Quarter

LaCie introduced the 4 TB Rugged RAID at CES, bringing RAID 0 and RAID 1 (mirrored) storage options to its Rugged line-up of portable hard drives.

The drive has a hard-wired Thunderbolt cable, which carries power as well as data to the unit. A USB 3.0 port is also available, but a USB cable will not power the unit — LaCie tells us that 5 watts of power over USB 3.0 is not enough to run the two included drives, interfaces, and hardware RAID controller, while the 10 watts of power from Thunderbolt does the trick. Needless to say, the integrated Thunderbolt makes this an especially sleek, single-cable solution for Mac users.

The Rugged RAID can reach transfer speeds of up to 240 MB/sec, the company said. Using the drive in RAID 1 mode reduces the storage capacity but ensures that data can't be lost in a single drive failure.

LaCie said the Rugged RAID is designed to withstand being dropped from a height of five feet and to resist being crushed under one ton of pressure. 

The drive is expected to ship later this quarter at an MSRP of $450.