LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive Review

The biggest of these "little things" is the fact that the LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0 drive's skin is not cheap plastic; rather it is made from brushed aluminum. This gives a very nice texture to the Rikiki that really needs to be FELT to be full understood. The other thing which separates this external drive from most is the fact that it is smaller than most. Where it has a 12.5mm, 2.5" hard drive in there, it is going to be taller than some of the smaller 2.5" based external storage solutions that we have looked at, namely the Seagate GoFlex Portable 500GB. However others such as the Iomega eGo 500GB are actually bigger than this. In either case, the Rikiki is shorter than basically any hard drive enclosure we have ever seen! It may not be much but every little bit helps but it does make this a very portable drive.

From left to right, Seagate GoFlex Portable, LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0, Iomega eGo USB 3.0

Of course with that being said, the square edges of LaCie Rikiki will have a tendency to stick into you if you try carrying it in a pocket. On the positive side, this combination of small stature, with deep black color does mean this bad boy will blend into near any environment. No matter how minimalist, no matter how high tech, no matter if it's a PC workstation or a home theater environment; the LaCie Rikiki will fit right in as if it the area was designed around it!

The only real nit worth picking with the Rikiki 1TB USB 3.0 portable drive is the fact that LaCie opted to use security torx bolts. These little bolts are a royal nuisance to remove so if the hard drive inside it dies after the warranty has expired (if it dies before... get LaCie to replace it for you), it is going to be slow going getting it out. Though, the secret with these smaller security torx bolts is the center post is extremely fragile and malleable in most cases. If you get a torx screwdriver of the right size, simply put it in the head and give a good sharp bang to it and the screwdriver will force the center post down enough to give the torx head a "bite". This is how I do it as I refuse to spend 10 bucks for a "specialty" screwdriver when you can use near any properly sized torx driver and do this 'trick'.

The internal hard drive LaCie opted for their 1TB is a 5400rpm Toshiba MK1059GSM. As expected, this is a 12.5mm form factor 2.5" hard drive and thus explains the added height of this model. It also explains the need for the 120V power adapter! In a nutshell, this bad boy requires 900mA to spin up (4.5W of power). So, if you try to use the included single port USB 3.0 cable on a USB 2.0 enabled system, you probably are not going to get it to work. This will vary from system to system as while USB 2.0 ports are only "supposed" to deliver 500mA, not all manufacturers follow it and allow for higher power draws. Since a wall adapter is not included and neither is a two port cable, you really are going to have to phone LaCie up and ask for one. If you do that, they will send you a "proper" two port cable for free. To be honest, this is very good customer service, but by the same token, it should never need to happen as LaCie should have included the proper cable in the first place.

On the truly positive side, LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0 portable drive opted to go with the very good ASMedia ASM1051 controller chip. We really like seeing these little bad boys in a drive as to be blunt they are simply better than the JMicron chip that some other companies opt for.

Software
Assuming you have auto run enabled, the first time you attach the LaCie Rikiki 1TB USB 3.0 portable drive to any system, you will be greeted by a pop-up window prompting you to setup your drive and then setup the software which is included. The first part is very simple as it basically boils down to how you want the 1TB of space partitioned. If you plan on using it only on MS Windows systems you can use the entire drive as one large NFTS volume. If you plan on using it on Apple or Linux operating systems you have the option of doing things differently and not setting it up as a NTFS drive.

Once the formatting is complete, the software which is also installed on to the LaCie Rikiki USB 3.0's partition will prompt you to install it. In the case of the Rikiki, it is Genie Backup Assistant, which is basically a cut down version of the software which accompanied my LaCie 2Big USB 3.0 RAID I reviewed awhile back. Basically, it is a fairly powerful piece of backup software, while you will not be able to do as many advanced things with as you would the Genie Professional software it does get the job done; and more importantly is very intuitive and very easy to use. You can do manual backup of data or schedule backups, it really is all up to you and while it will not replace Acronis as my backup software of choice it still is pretty good considering it is a "free" or "value added" piece of software.