When I started to strip my Series Land Rover down for a rebuild a couple years ago, I decided I wanted to attempt to document the experience & process through time-lapse photography. I dug out my old Canon SD200 digital camera, installed some custom firmware that supported time-lapse shots, and got to work. The only problem has been, even considering how infrequently I get to work on that massive project, I ended up with a ton of individual photos.
The time-lapse alone results in 2-4GB of data for every day of work I perform, which adds up quickly. I went looking for a newer, bigger external hard drive to replace my 320GB LaCie Rugged Mini. Having an iPhone & iPad mini that I occasionally shot additional documentation & reference photos & video, I wanted something that could easily collect data from my MacBook Pro or my iOS devices. Oh, and I’ve been trying to perform this Land Rover disassembly & refurbishment project as off-the-grid as possible, so something small, portable, and low power was important. Enter the LaCie Fuel.
There are a few wireless hard drives on the market, but as a long-time fan of LaCie drives, the LaCie Fuel jumped out at me. The fact that its design is reminiscent of a Jerry can, like those I have for my Land Rover, didn’t hurt either. As LaCie is now owned by Seagate (also one of my favorite drive manufacturers), their Fuel drive is based on Seagate’s own popular wireless hard drives and can even use the same media app, though they have their own branded version. After reading favorable reviews of the LaCie Fuel (including this one from TechRadar) and the hard drive which is used internally (reported to be the Samsung M9T, as reviewed by StorageReview.com), I decided to go with the larger 2TB LaCie Fuel so I’d have additional space to grow into.
I’ve now been using it for a number of months and am finding that is has solved numerous storage problems all at once, but let’s start with the basic functionality. The USB 3 port—which doubles to charge the Fuel’s internal battery—is very fast for uploading & accessing data from my MacBook Pro. The drive runs so much quieter, smoother, and cooler than my older LaCie Rugged Mini, it is hard to believe it is on. While uploading files via WiFi is understandably significantly slower than using USB, the LaCie Media app makes it quite a simple process and it is certainly fast enough to stream HD movies to my iPad. There has even been nice firmware & app updates over the past few months that have added automatic photo & video upload from iOS devices, as well as Dropbox & Google Drive sync support. It is very straightforward to configure your LaCie Fuel to join your home or office WiFi so that when your iOS device is connected to it, it has Internet access in addition to access to your files & media. And, the LaCie Media app is quite powerful… letting you browse, upload, rename, and move files on the Fuel, so you really have full access to your drive and it’s data, even on iOS devices.
As for my photos, I currently have it configured so that my iOS devices automatically upload their photos & videos, as long as I turn the Fuel on and connect them to its WiFi network. That old Canon SD200 uses SD cards, so I either pop those into the SD slot on my MacBook Pro or into my Apple Lightning to SD Card Reader on my iPad and transfer them to the Fuel. I just picked up a Dropbox Pro account, so I will be moving my photos over to that directory on the Fuel and letting them sync up to Dropbox as an additional backup (it has already synced all my documents from Dropbox & Google Drive down to my Fuel automatically).
Naturally, battery life is dependent on usage and the Fuel has quite a few options you can turn on. Fortunately, the LaCie Media app has a quick good/better/best display in the settings so you can optimize it for battery longevity when needed. I can stream a couple of movies with my default settings which includes joining my home WiFi & syncing with Dropbox. I will turn off more settings when I am away from power and want to squeeze all the battery life out of it that I can. If you are near a power outlet, you can always plug it into the included USB charger (or, as I do, my iPad’s power adapter) if you want to use it while keeping the battery topped off.
I bought the Fuel for more photo storage, and found it has opened up possibilities I did not anticipate. I am extremely happy with the large storage capacity, performance, and especially all the options that the LaCie Fuel provides. The case design, while not intended to be as durable as my LaCie Rugged Mini, it is of better quality than any other plastic hard drive case I’ve seen. For a simple, small hard drive, it really has a diverse set of configuration options and, with battery power as well, it is quite a flexible storage product. I would highly suggest the Fuel to everyone with an iOS device, especially if you regularly use both Macs & iOS devices for fun or profit.