Two decades after Neil Poulton wrapped a hard drive in a neon-orange bumper and accidentally invented one of tech’s most recognisable accessories, LaCie’s “Rugged” line still does exactly what it promised: make storage you can shove in a bag, forget about, and (probably) live to tell the story. That aesthetic — bright, unapologetic, and useful — has become shorthand for portable reliability inside dozens of camera bags and field rigs.

Today, Seagate pulled the sheet off the next chapter: the LaCie Rugged SSD4. It’s a tidy, incremental update in looks that delivers a noticeably larger jump in performance. The drive arrives in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB sizes, priced at $134.99, $249.99 and $479.99, respectively, and replaces the older 500GB option with these larger, more pro-oriented capacities.

Same palm-sized presence, new face and centered port

If you’ve handled the Rugged Mini SSD, you’ll recognise the SSD4 at a glance — same footprint, same orange-sleeve DNA — but with a few small aesthetic tweaks that matter. The SSD4 swaps the smoother aluminum finish for a brushed one and recenters the USB-C port on the edge, a subtle change that makes a difference when you’re plugging cables in while juggling camera gear or a tripod. It’s the kind of small, thoughtful redesign that doesn’t scream “new model” but improves day-to-day ergonomics.

A serious bump in real-world speed

Where the SSD4 actually changes the game is throughput. Seagate says the drive supports USB 40Gbps (aka USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 / USB4-compatible bandwidth) and tops out at roughly 4,000MB/s read and 3,000MB/s write — about double the read performance of the Rugged Mini that shipped with up to 2,000MB/s. That jump matters: transfers that previously felt like “fine” are now fast enough to move multi-gigabyte camera files in a heartbeat and to operate like a working scratch drive for a lot of modern codecs.

For perspective: Seagate’s own higher-end LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5 — the company’s Thunderbolt-5 flagship introduced earlier this year — hits much higher peaks (around 6,700MB/s read / 5,300MB/s write) thanks to Thunderbolt 5. The Rugged SSD4 doesn’t try to elbow into that territory; instead, it positions itself as the sweet spot between affordable portability and genuinely fast external NVMe performance.

Why the numbers matter (and when they don’t)

Raw megabytes-per-second are easy to quote but often miss nuance. For photographers and indie filmmakers, the SSD4’s new envelope is especially meaningful: Seagate says the interface is fast enough to capture ProRes 4K at 120fps from a USB-C iPhone — a real, practical use case for journalists and content creators who’ll record on a phone and want a reliable, high-speed dump point in the field. For editors working on heavy multicam timelines or raw cinema files, the SSD4 will reduce wait times for offloads and speed up previews and small renders.

But if your workload is big-studio 8K VFX or sustained multi-stream editing that benefits from Thunderbolt 5’s bandwidth, the Pro5 (or a desktop PCIe solution) will still be the better tool. The SSD4 is a pragmatic, portable compromise: much faster than the older Mini in everyday use, but not the ultimate speed trophy.

Durability isn’t a marketing stunt

The Rugged family’s signature orange bumper isn’t just for show. The SSD4 keeps the IP54 dust-and-splash resistance rating, which means it’ll shrug off splashes and a dusty shoot — but don’t mistake that for waterproofing. Seagate’s spec specifically calls out that the rating is splash- and dust-resistant, not submersible. The orange bumper and internal shock design are still rated to survive drops from right around the roughly three-meter/10-foot mark, which makes the drive a comfortable choice for travel photographers and reporters who need storage that can take knocks — though, as always, “drop-proof” is not an excuse to throw it around.

Who should care (and who shouldn’t)

Buy the Rugged SSD4 if you’re a content creator who:

• shoots high-frame-rate or high-bitrate video on phones or mirrorless cameras and needs fast offloads on the go;
• wants a compact, rugged scratch or backup drive that’s faster than USB-3.1-era portable SSDs; or
• appreciates the Rugged design language and travel-ready durability without the premium cost of Thunderbolt-5 hardware.

Hold off and spend more if you:

• regularly edit multi-stream 8K footage or do VFX work that demands the absolute highest sustained bandwidth, or
• need waterproof gear rated for submersion and heavier environmental certification than IP54.

The verdict — modest, useful evolution

Seagate hasn’t reinvented the wheel with the Rugged SSD4. What it has done is two sensible things at once: tighten up the design language of an iconic product and deliver a significant, meaningful performance uplift for real-world creative workflows. For many users, that middle ground — better speeds without the Thunderbolt-5 premium — is precisely the spot where value meets practicality.

If you’ve been waiting for an upgrade to haul ProRes clips off a shoot without a coffee break, the Rugged SSD4 is finally the model that makes that feasible in a pocket-sized package. If you need absolute speed or full waterproofing, look higher up the line and elsewhere. Either way, the orange bumper still looks good.