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LaCie d2 Professional Desktop Drive Review: A Subscription-Free Way of Backing up All of Your Data

The Lowdown

I highly recommend the LaCie d2 Professional for anyone who has a large collection of media and files that they don’t necessarily want to store in the cloud or pay monthly fees to store. While you don’t get the app access on the go from the d2 Professional that you will with cloud-based services, this is ultimately more secure.

Overall
4.5

Pros

  • Sleek design
  • Two Thunderbolt 3 ports so you can daisy chain to other devices
  • Massive quantities of memory space available for a reasonable amount
  • No monthly subscription or worrying about your cloud storage getting hacked

Cons

  • A less aggressive orb lighting on the front
  • Labeling the power supply would make it easier for people with multiple devices to keep the cable matched to the hard drive

LaCie is known for its premium external hard drives and SSDs that have been proven to be reliable at saving all the important data of our lives. I maxed out the 1TB hard drive on my Macbook Pro, and the 10TB LaCie d2 Professional Desktop Drive has become a great extension of my storage!

LaCie d2 Professional

The LaCie d2 Professional has become a mainstay on my standing desk at home, and it hosts just about anything you can imagine — from photos, files, movies for my Plex server, and more. The d2 Pro is available starting at 4TB, and it goes all the way to a whopping 18TB.

I was paying $20 per month for 2TB of storage with Dropbox, but having a hardware solution that’s not in the cloud nor tied to a subscription is less expensive, and it ultimately seems safer.

LaCie d2 Professional

Designed by Neil Poulton, an industrial designer who has won plenty of awards, the LaCie d2 Professional’s enclosure is made from a single piece of aluminum that not only looks fantastic on my all-black desk but allows for a slimmer profile and better cooling for a longer drive life.

I’ve had several hard drives fail on me over the years. Still, I can comfortably say that the LaCie d2 Professional’s aluminum body and fan at the rear seem to distribute heat much more efficiently than my experiences with plastic hard drive housings. I appreciate that the LaCie d2 Professional includes a five-year limited warranty that includes Rescue Data Recovery Services should the unexpected happen.

We’ve come a long way from bulky multiple terabyte hard drives that look and feel like bricks; the LaCie d2 Professional feels downright futuristic while packing 10TB in a sleek package.

LaCie d2 Professional

The LaCie d2 Professional I received has a 10TB IronWolf Pro enterprise-class drive with a 7200 RPM spindle speed that is slated to perform up to 240MB/s. In my personal testing, I’ve been able to move 5GB files in mere seconds. I’ve been dabbling with video editing and hosting large HEIC folders of my daughter that can be 25GB a file; without outside storage, they would eat up the physical storage of my MacBook Pro.

The LaCie d2 Professional is great as a host, and it’s also quick to transfer. Not only does the LaCie d2 Professional have two Thunderbolt 3 ports that allow you to daisy chain to multiple other devices, but it also works perfectly as a host to my Plex server.

There’s also a single USB-C 3.1 port that allows you to connect to devices that don’t have Thunderbolt 3 at their disposal. This is the route I tend to go when I connect my iPad Pro directly versus using Airdrop, so I can easily transfer podcast recordings without relying on Airdrop to my Mac, then transferring to the d2.

LaCie d2 Professional accessories

Unboxing and setting up the LaCie d2 Professional is straightforward; it comes with a quick install guide that shows you the various ways you can connect it. Five different power cables allow usage in various outlets according to your location in the world.

The power adapter is a standard 100-240V adapter. I’ve always dreaded lugging these around because they are so bulky. Most of the time, these adapters never actually say the company name, so what I have done is attach a sticker to the top of the adapter signifying that it specifically goes with the LaCie d2 and not some obscure docking solution.

Credit is due to LaCie for including a Thunderbolt 3 cable with dual USB-C ends and a standard USB Type-C to Type-A cable that gives you the ability to use it with legacy devices that still have older ports. I would highly suggest not losing this particular cable. I misplaced mine in the process of cleaning my home and thought purchasing a USB-A to USB-C cable would suffice, but I noticed transfer speeds were much, much slower going this route. So guard the two cables that come boxed with the LaCie d2 Professional closely.

I moved 1.8 Terabytes of data from my Google Drive to the d2, and the LaCie d2 Professional handled it like a champ. On the other hand, Google is slower than a snail in terms of download speeds, so I find that I have to continuously have my MacBook Pro connected for 8-10 hours overnight to have it transfer between 100-250GBs a day. Luckily the LaCie d2 Professional’s internal fan is quiet while keeping things cool and stable.

LaCie d2 Professional

There’s one cosmetic thing that bothers me about the LaCie d2 Professional; at the front of the device, there’s a blue orb that signifies when the drive is running. It’s distracting during the day because it pulses while files are being transferred. It’s even more distracting at night; I’ve found myself getting distracted while writing just watching the pulsing light. I wish that there was a way to turn it off or dim it a bit.

I’m confident that the LaCie d2 Professional will hold many files for a long time, though I may eventually have to purchase another one as files become larger and larger. The one downside is that there is no way to access your files from an app when you’re not local, but such is the nature of local storage. For files I need access to on the go, I’ll still use a service like Dropbox or Google Drive. I have plans to partition the LaCie d2 Professional so it will backup my MacBook as well.

I highly recommend the LaCie d2 Professional for anyone who has a large collection of media and files that they don’t necessarily want to store in the cloud or pay monthly fees to store. While you don’t get the app access on the go from the d2 Professional that you will with cloud-based services, this is ultimately more secure.

The LaCie d2 Professional starts at $189.99 for the 4TB and goes up to $679.99 for the 18TB model. The 10TB model I reviewed here sells for $319.99; it is available directly from the manufacturer and other retailers, including Amazon.

Source: Manufacturer supplied sample

What I Like: Sleek design; Two Thunderbolt 3 ports so you can daisy chain to other devices; Massive quantities of memory space available for a reasonable amount; No monthly subscription or worrying about your cloud storage getting hacked

What Needs Improvement: A less aggressive orb lighting on the front; Labeling the power supply would make it easier for people with multiple devices to keep the cable matched to the hard drive

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