I could not build a box that size for the same price. I tried. Ended up with a mid-tower unit. Yes, it holds 8 instead of 5, but it's also a lot bigger than could be.
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CES 2013: LaCie Introduces New 20TB Thunderbolt and NAS Products
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I could not build a box that size for the same price. I tried. Ended up with a mid-tower unit. Yes, it holds 8 instead of 5, but it's also a lot bigger than could be.
The LaCie 5big Thunderbolt is already faster than the Drobo Thunderbolt, so wouldn't benefit from any mSATA cache at more than 700MB/sec. Drobo is much slower even with the mSATA cache.
actually when FireWire was introduced, pci cards just to add the interface cost $99, and drives were much smaller capacity, typically less than 120GB.
Checkout older magazine ads, or archive.org for what some ancient websites presented to browsers.
I'm very happy seeing another company take advantage of Thunderbolt, however, can one of these companies release a bloody 0TB enclosure? All I want is a bare Thunderbolt enclosure, albeit at a slightly less expensive price, and I'll gladly supply the drives myself. Hint hint to OWC..... 
You're reading a comment from a happy Drobo owner. Three times over. An FS, a classic, and a S. I too am looking at the 5D for my next enclosure.
Ahh, is that what they're calling that these days?
On a more serious note- why doesn't Apple just outright buy LaCie. They seem to be one of the few that manufactures any peripherals related to Thunderbolt anyway, at a price range most Apple users are accustomed to. At least it would be in-house then.
Ok, maybe not so serious. ;-)
NAS Pro can be bought diskless and have SimplyRAID (mixed set of hard disks different capacity, sort of like Drobo).
Having said that, I would like a comparison between NAS Pro and Drobo 5N, which cost about the same.
Seagate announced the purchase of LaCie last year in May.
Checkout http://www.thunderbolttechnology.net for a look at some of the other announced and shipping products, or the section of products from your favorite internet reseller.
I picked up a Drobo and it sounded like a coffee grinder, totally unhappy with it; same week I picked up a Pegasus R6 and could not be more happy on the other side of the coin. Also the software packages included with both were about par, I could just not handle the noise from the Drobo.
Yep...I have a Pegasus R4 and they still cost £800+ I guess GB for GB it's about right though...You do get what you pay for with Promise, although I can't comment on Lacie stuff.
'Educational' you say; is that for 'higher education?'
(hardware) Raid 10 should have been included in that size/price category. Raid 5, Ughh.....
Not been impressed with LaCie lately; maybe just pure bad luck, but my recently purchased 1TB USB3/Thunderbolt 'Rugged' drive came with an included Thunderbolt cable that 'died' after 20 min., and the 4TB 2big Thunderbolt, that I bought around the same time, was DOA. Needless to say, I returned the 2big, and bought the APPLE TB cable for the 'Rugged', which now works fine.
+1
Their power supplies are terrible. I think that's the reason one of my drives slowly started to die. It used to click because it wasn't getting enough power from a faulty supply. New power supply fixed it and now even with a good one it clicks. Quality product in terms of build but I'd never buy another drive from them again. I've received 3 power supply replacements from them in a matter of 2 years.
If only OS X had a decent file system
Finally... a JBOD enclosure with Thunderbolt
The one thing that is missing is a decent file system. It's almost ridiculous to put a 20 years old file system (HFS) on this brand-new storage device.
I wish Apple brought back the ZFS.
Finally... a JBOD enclosure with Thunderbolt
The one thing that is missing is a decent file system. It's almost ridiculous to put a 20 years old file system (HFS) on this brand-new storage device.
I wish Apple brought back the ZFS.
Not sure about the pci-card interfaces: I was using new Macs of that age that came equipped with FW. Any PCI card isn't cheap. At the time, the FW cables were $20 and went down. They became so ubiquitous with FW peripherals that I have a plethora of FW cords all around the house. Never need to buy another FW cord in my life.
TB is definitely pricier than FW by a factor of 2 or 3 or 4.
I have a lacie rugged too , 4.5 years old , still works flawless.
Got a new rugged thunderbolt sdd , works flawless aswell.
And how old are those stories with their PSU ?
They've got all newer , smaller ones .
Those PSU problems are a thing of the past , i think Lacie learned from this.
Deal with it.
Pegasus R6 is a DAS. The Drobo 5N is a NAS. You're comparing different product categories.
May want to read a bit before making bets that are sure losers.
3years, and like the other 5big products in the family, replacement drives are available, and if you wish to use your own, provided drives can be easily substituted into the drive carriers. While the Thunderbolt version only comes with 5x2TB or 5x4TB, the NAS Pro version comes with those configs, as well as empty with no drives so you can configure your own.
Saw them at PEPCOM last night at CES and the systems looked pretty good.
it appears that the Thunderbolt one only supports RAID 0 & 1.
The NAS offers RAID 5.
Not supporting RAID 5 on a 5-disk architecture is ridiculous.
