LaCie's 'Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2' Now Available for $1299

Yeah I'm sure that's reasonably priced.

Would much rather spend $1300 on this than I would buying a MacBook Air, or a 12TB Thunderbolt external solution from OWC...

I wonder what the hold-up is with SSD drives. The capacity is still relatively low and the prices are still really high. If this is aimed at video pros, 1 TB is a laughably small drive.

It's a good thing LaCie has other products to sell.

pmz said:

Yeah I'm sure that's reasonably priced.

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Actually, it is. 2x512 GB of PCIe SSD is over $1,000 by itself.

You're pretty much getting a 2-drive enclosure with a heatsink, fan, TB2 controller and cable for free if you were in the market for 2x512GB of PCIe SSD.

Of course it's targeted at a niche market, but that doesn't make the price bad for what it is.

pmz said:

Yeah I'm sure that's reasonably priced.

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You're getting 1TB of space, it kind of isn't a ripoff.

Two things that stick in my memory

1) Looking through the Windows 95 help guide we got with a PC back in 1995, it showed a computer with two hard drives. I never thought I'd afford a computer with more than one (now I have about 12.5TB)

2) When I got my iMac DV 400 (Blueberry) I never thought I'd be able to afford anything USB as it was so expensive at the time.

Now when I look at any Thunderbolt peripherals I think I'm never going to afford anything Thunderbolt....Then a story like this comes out and I'm pretty sure I'll still never be able to afford anything Thunderbolt

pac

500GB SSD go for under $250 for SATAIII but that's not what's in this device. For PCIe SSD at the speed LaCie's device (supposedly) delivers retail price for 480GB drives (OCZ) is >$1400 per drive (slower ones from lower quality manufacturers can be had for around $700) if you shop around for the best price, most of the time they are listed for around $2000. I looked around and found a refurbished one for about $800.

So $1300 for 1TB worth and write speeds of around 1200 MB/s in a Thunderbolt 2 enclosure is quite a good price for what you get.

pmz said:

Yeah I'm sure that's reasonably priced.

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Too many people don't realize there are big differences in SSDs, just like there is with regular hard disk drives. A lot of computer makers don't want you to know this however because simply saying SSD automatically makes sales even if they use the slowest/cheapest SSD available.

pgiguere1 said:

Actually, it is. 2x512 GB of PCIe SSD is over $1,000 by itself.

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Those drives are also quite a bit slower (Sustained Reads: Up to 830MB/s; Sustained Writes: Up to 810MB/s) than the LaCie (Average Transfer Rate: Reads: 1,375MB/s; Writes: 1,180MB/s). This makes the LaCie an even better deal.

pmz said:

Yeah I'm sure that's reasonably priced.

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People who use/need stuff like this make that in a day, or more. Still surprised that people just don't get that.

It looks good but I refuse to buy anything from LaCie ever again. Had way too many hard drives break and terrible customer service.

I'll stick with OWC for now even though they are slow to market.

neuropsychguy said:

Those drives are also quite a bit slower (Sustained Reads: Up to 830MB/s; Sustained Writes: Up to 810MB/s) than the LaCie (Average Transfer Rate: Reads: 1,375MB/s; Writes: 1,180MB/s). This makes the LaCie an even better deal.

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RAID 0 is a stripe set, so both drives run in parallel. So, if I do the math correctly "Those drives" would do 2x830 r, 2x810 w, so faster.

John Bokma said:

RAID 0 is a stripe set, so both drives run in parallel. So, if I do the math correctly "Those drives" would do 2x830 r, 2x810 w, so faster.

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And be more expensive than a single Lacie. I think the Lacie is reasonably priced for what it offers. If I had the cach I'd buy two and run in parallel to get 2.6 GB/sec. Or even go 3x, almost 4GB/sec.

pmz said:

Yeah I'm sure that's reasonably priced.

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Not for you. Not for me. But for the niche LaCie makes this for, it's great. This is pennies for a big production house.

I can't get past LaCie's obnoxious giant blue lights.

jayducharme said:

If this is aimed at video pros, 1 TB is a laughably small drive.

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Surely 1TB is enough space for a working drive. A portable working drive at that.

The tagline says "The World's Fastest Portable Storage"

This isn't meant to be a vault where you archive year's worth of projects and media.

At first I was like
Then I was like

For two 500 PCIe SSDs at TB2 speeds that is awesome.

jayducharme said:

I wonder what the hold-up is with SSD drives. The capacity is still relatively low and the prices are still really high. If this is aimed at video pros, 1 TB is a laughably small drive.

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Process improvements. The hold up is the availability of high-density flash memory chips. And flash memory is the cheapest form of memory to manufacture! Try pricing out SDRAM or SRAM at those capacities.

pmz said:

Yeah I'm sure that's reasonably priced.

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For what it is, that is downright cheap.

This product isn't aimed at people who need terabytes upon terabytes of storage where speed doesn't matter. This product isn't for people who only need a tiny amount of very-fast storage. This product is for people who need a large amount of very-fast storage.

This is for scratch file storage for video editing - when you want immediate access to an hour or two worth of 4K video for maximum editing speed. You use slower mass storage for longer term storage, but for the five-minute segment you're editing RIGHT NOW, you want all relevant footage available instantly.

It's not like the editor of The Hobbit (or any other 3 hour movie) will need all of the raw footage for all three hours of the finished film available all at once. He/she will need the raw footage for the current SHOT, maybe the current scene. But not all 30 TB (or more) of raw footage for the whole movie. With current formats, 2 TB (two of these) is just enough for a normal workflow. I'm sure in a few years, more will be necessary (actually, my example of The Hobbit is one such, since it's in 3D at double framerate,) but for most video professionals, this will be sufficient.

There are other similar uses - large scale graphic design, for example. But this is well priced and specced for what it's target market is.

hexor said:

Too many people don't realize there are big differences in SSDs, just like there is with regular hard disk drives. A lot of computer makers don't want you to know this however because simply saying SSD automatically makes sales even if they use the slowest/cheapest SSD available.

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I live and work by SSD alone. Regardless, its a rip off. Time for the prices to come down on them. Its just pathetic.

Finally a device to store all my torrented movies

jayducharme said:

I wonder what the hold-up is with SSD drives. The capacity is still relatively low and the prices are still really high. If this is aimed at video pros, 1 TB is a laughably small drive.

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Depends on exactly what the pro is doing. If they are doing smaller projects then this is fine.
That's exactly why the Promise Pegasus v2 devices exist: LARGE pro projects. And why the bigger models have 6- or 8-drive enclosures: to give volume AND speed.
A pro who needs fastest speed PLUS a certain amount of storage would possibly use TWO OR MORE Pegasus units to achieve faster speeds using emptier disks (as more empty disks spin faster), hence would be better having 8x 4TB drives half empty, rather than 8x 3TB drives nearly full.

This review offers 950MBps for an R8, so more than one unit would achieve maybe double that, three even more, etc.
http://www.larryjordan.biz/product-review-promise-pegasus2-raid


I use 2x Pegasus v1 R6's (for storage, though), and they're really great and pretty simple to use through their intuitive GUI to set-up and keep tabs on: 24TB in each (20TB usable after RAID 5) by adding my own (non-enterprise standard) 4TB HDDs to them, one R6 backs-up to the other.
I did get a really great deal on them though, otherwise they're a bit overkill for mass storage (most would either use USB 3 DAS or Gig-E NAS – mine are connected to an always-on Mac Mini so are effectively networked continually), but at least I know they should be good for my storage needs (with PLENTY of speed and very little latency) for the next few years, lol!

DTphonehome said:

Not for you. Not for me. But for the niche LaCie makes this for, it's great. This is pennies for a big production house.

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Why do people (wrongly) assume that 'big production houses' are happy to grossly overpay for a 1 TB of storage?

As I said....I rely on SSD for its performance...but its beyond ridiculous that a 1 TB still equals $1000 USD +/- a few pennies.

Michael Scrip said:

Surely 1TB is enough space for a working drive. A portable working drive at that.

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If you're working with 4k, the bitrate is nearly 500mb/s. One hour of footage will eat up over 1.5 TB of storage. I guess if you're working with lower resolutions or short clips, it might be enough storage. But very soon, 4k will be the low-end standard. I suppose if you're a "pro" you could afford a few of these and chain them together.