CES 2013: LaCie Introduces New 20TB Thunderbolt and NAS Products

[unplugme71]

Originally Posted by hachre

The price is quite good if you calculate for yourself the cost of 5 drives to get to 20 TB, cost of a big enough enclosure with cooling, SATA controllers and a power supply you end up not far from what they're asking. Of course their solution is a bit more expensive but you get a beautiful, compact, small yet high efficiency enclosure with hot swap capability and Thunderbolt connectivity which wasn't included in my comparison.

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.

[g4cube]

Originally Posted by unplugme71

Kinda upset to see it doesn't offer mSATA to provide a 32, 64, or 128GB cache drive like the Drobo's have.

It makes a BIG difference in speed.

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.

[musio]

Would like an empty unit. At least drobo comes empty!

[g4cube]

Originally Posted by Lesser Evets

NO. Though, to be fair, it didn't have as much dynamic peripherals as the TB.

FireWire wasn't cheap, but it wasn't exorbitant.

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.

[iMikeT]

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.....

[luffytubby]

Originally Posted by NakedSnake

"I'm afraid I can't let you save that, Dave."

respect for that comment. my thoughts exactly.

[Digital Skunk]

Originally Posted by unplugme71

Yup. I switched to Drobo and couldn't be happier. I know a lot of people dislike them, most because of price, but they offer what I need and never had an issue with any of their products other than the Drobo FS which is discontinued.

I'm considering picking up the Drobo 5N for personal use and killing my file server. I just wish they offered Active Directory/LDAP support.

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.

[iReality85]

Originally Posted by iDemiurge

Finally something that can store my entire collection of educational videos!

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. ;-)

[nutmac]

Originally Posted by thepowerofnone

Can someone please explain to me why you would choose the NAS over a Thunderbolt model given the identical price and assuming you had a Thunderbolt equipped Mac which could host the Thunderbolt model as a shared disk over a network?

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.

[g4cube]

Originally Posted by iReality85

...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.

Seagate announced the purchase of LaCie last year in May.

Checkout 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.

[calderone]

Not bad, still rocking my R6 12TB. Wouldn't mind 20 though

[Cisco_Kid]

Originally Posted by unplugme71

Yup. I switched to Drobo and couldn't be happier. I know a lot of people dislike them, most because of price, but they offer what I need and never had an issue with any of their products other than the Drobo FS which is discontinued.

I'm considering picking up the Drobo 5N for personal use and killing my file server. I just wish they offered Active Directory/LDAP support.

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.

[Macman45]

Originally Posted by adcx64

For those of you who wre around longer than I am, was FireWire as expensive at launch?

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.

[Mr. Retrofire]

Originally Posted by iDemiurge

Finally something that can store my entire collection of educational videos!

“Educational videos”. ;-)

[macs4nw]

Originally Posted by iDemiurge

Finally something that can store my entire collection of educational videos!

'Educational' you say; is that for 'higher education?'

Originally Posted by FrizzleFryBen

DOA for me with only RAID 0 and 1.

(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.

[Macman45]

Originally Posted by Mr. Retrofire

“Educational videos”. ;-)

Depends on ones perspective though?

[auero]

Originally Posted by Digital Skunk

Agreed! Although, these aren't nearly as bad as the Pegasus enclosures from Promise. Although, the price may be justified with LaCie's track record in QC.

I am no HDD basher, but I've had my fair share of LaCie power supplies conk out on me.

+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.

[ben-adam]

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.

[Lesser Evets]

Originally Posted by g4cube

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.

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.

[Vidivici]

Originally Posted by Digital Skunk

Add to that some HDD manufacturers/retailers have better warranties and coverage.



I had four bad power supplies from LaCie and justs about all of them went up within the same year . . . . right when the warranty was up.

I haven't had a single issue with the mobile drives LaCie makes. I've two rugged drives pushing 6 years that haven't given me one single problem.

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.

[Tanax]

Originally Posted by Cisco_Kid

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.

Pegasus R6 is a DAS. The Drobo 5N is a NAS. You're comparing different product categories.

[dr01dy]

LaCie does not stand by their products. I will bet my left nut it comes with a 1 year warranty. And I bet my other nut you can't replace those drives.

[g4cube]

Originally Posted by dr01dy

LaCie does not stand by their products. I will bet my left nut it comes with a 1 year warranty. And I bet my other nut you can't replace those drives.

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.

[senohpoxas88]

Originally Posted by FrizzleFryBen

Guess they should update their specs page... http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10607

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.

[OllyW]

Originally Posted by dr01dy

LaCie does not stand by their products. I will bet my left nut it comes with a 1 year warranty.

Originally Posted by Lacie

Your LaCie 5big is protected by a three-year limited warranty.

Originally Posted by dr01dy

And I bet my other nut you can't replace those drives.

Originally Posted by Lacie

Thanks to hot-swappable disks**, you can simply slide a new disk into the safe volume without switching off the device.

I hope you weren't planning on having kids.