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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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LaCie today announced the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2, one of the first external hard drives that will support Intel's new Thunderbolt 2 specification to deliver transfer speeds of up to 1375 MB/s, significantly faster than USB 3.0 drives.

Little Big Disk includes two 500 GB PCIe solid state drives from Samsung in a Raid-0 configuration and is able to support mobile streaming and editing of both 4K and 3D video. The drive features a fully aluminum enclosure with a Mac Pro-style black finish along with an optimized interior design that improves cooling efficiency.

lacielittlebigdisk.jpg
The drive includes a thermoregulated fan that turns on only when necessary, producing little to no noise, and it also ships with an included Thunderbolt cable and a three year warranty.

AnandTech has posted a mini review of the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2, and in testing, found 1400 MB/s in sequential read speed along with 1100 MB/s write speed. Engadget saw similar results at CES, observing write speeds of 1200 MB/s and read speeds of 1300Mb/s. A 300 GB file transferred in approximately four minutes.
Thankfully, the drives that were set up ahead of our arrival, and had been sorting files for some time, remained at nearly room temp. With two of the Thunderbolt 2 drives set up in RAID 0, we witnessed 2,000 MB/s write speeds and 2,600 MB/s read numbers.
The LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 will be available during the first quarter of 2014 from LaCie.com. Pricing has yet to be announced.

Article Link: CES 2014: LaCie Debuts 'Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2' With Transfer Speeds Up to 1375 MB/s
 

ahbiteme

macrumors member
Feb 25, 2008
40
45
Sydney, Australia
This is one of those things where if you have to ask how much it is, you can't afford it. You probably don't need it, either. But hey, a guy can dream.
 

scottrichardson

macrumors 6502a
Jul 10, 2007
697
270
Ulladulla, NSW Australia
Awesome performance in RAID 0, but golly gosh, all my experience with OSX software RAID 0 has ended in the data eventually becoming corrupted, and strange behaviour. I'd be more likely to run this as two separate 500GB volumes. Literally EVERY time I have used RAID 0 for anything important, it's resulted in failure.
 

Djreversal

macrumors newbie
Nov 16, 2007
29
0
Awesome performance in RAID 0, but golly gosh, all my experience with OSX software RAID 0 has ended in the data eventually becoming corrupted, and strange behaviour. I'd be more likely to run this as two separate 500GB volumes. Literally EVERY time I have used RAID 0 for anything important, it's resulted in failure.


Really.. I've been on raid 0 since 2008 and never had 1 issue.
 

zoffdino

macrumors member
Apr 27, 2009
44
23
What the cost...

500GB SSDs are about $350 retail. LaCie can get them OEM so they'll pay quite a bit less. Let's assume it's $250 per drive: 2 x SSD = $500, case = $10, Lightning chip = $20. Total = $530. Knowing LaCie, they will sell this for $1000.

Not that they have solid reputation to begin with. My friend had a "Porsche-designed" external HDD that failed in 5 months. The replacement failed after 2 months. And after that, he just bought another one.
 

Stephent

macrumors member
Jan 31, 2012
92
0
500GB SSDs are about $350 retail. LaCie can get them OEM so they'll pay quite a bit less. Let's assume it's $250 per drive: 2 x SSD = $500, case = $10, Lightning chip = $20. Total = $530. Knowing LaCie, they will sell this for $1000.

Not that they have solid reputation to begin with. My friend had a "Porsche-designed" external HDD that failed in 5 months. The replacement failed after 2 months. And after that, he just bought another one.

That is why I would rather spend the extra $430 and get a 8TB (4 disk) Pegasus2 raid5 array.
 

Dr Charter

macrumors 6502
Feb 26, 2011
277
8
Oklahoma
I might buy one of these. My original Thunderbolt Little Big Disk has been great. I'd love it if this one cut out the constant fan noise.
 

macrumorsuser10

macrumors 6502
Nov 18, 2010
359
445
Let me guess, $999?

The current Thunderbolt (1) Little Big Disk with 1TB SSD costs $999.95 at the Apple Store and at Amazon. I am hoping the price stays the same.

From reading through the reviews, it seems the only issues from the current version were fan noise and heat, so I also hope Lacie fixed all that.
 

ouimetnick

macrumors 68040
Aug 28, 2008
3,552
6,341
Beverly, Massachusetts
Never really cared for the styling of LaCie's products. Why do they have that ugly eyeball shaped button on all their stuff? I like the look of G-Tech's hard drives though.
 

fermat-au

macrumors 6502
Dec 7, 2009
464
521
Australia
500GB SSDs are about $350 retail. LaCie can get them OEM so they'll pay quite a bit less. Let's assume it's $250 per drive: 2 x SSD = $500, case = $10, Lightning chip = $20. Total = $530. Knowing LaCie, they will sell this for $1000.
If you can get these for $700 (2x$350) retail, if you had a PC (or old Mac Pro) you would save $300 by installing internally. So this is a $300 tax for having the new small Mac Pro.
 

iBug2

macrumors 601
Jun 12, 2005
4,530
851
They are using PCIe SSD, not SATA3. Regular SATA3 SSD's go up to 500MB/sec so with two of them you can't break 1000MB/sec.

So you can't simply buy bigger drives and put them in I suppose.
 

Icaras

macrumors 603
Mar 18, 2008
6,343
3,380
Why do they have that ugly eyeball shaped button on all their stuff? I like the look of G-Tech's hard drives though.

What? Never seen 2001: Space Odyssey? ;)

And why does G-Technology always have that big "G" logo on their stuff too? Not being a smart ass but I'll take the eye over the G.
 

osx11

macrumors 6502a
Jan 16, 2011
825
0
Are people generally satisfied with LaCie drives?

----------

If you can get these for $700 (2x$350) retail, if you had a PC (or old Mac Pro) you would save $300 by installing internally. So this is a $300 tax for having the new small Mac Pro.

Don't tell people the truth. They want to live in their Apple fairy land. :D
 

wikiverse

macrumors 6502a
Sep 13, 2012
689
952
This isnt for the average home consumer so even if it is $1k, so what?

Because businesses don't turn a profit by overpaying for everything they buy.

At last count I had about 70TB worth of external hard drives. Based on your logic, If each of those cost $1000 and were $300 overpriced, I'd have pissed away $21,000. I could hire a part time employee for that and it would be more productive than a Lacie external drive.

When you have a business and are buying these things all the time, it's even more important to get good value.
 
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