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LaCie Adds 2TB Option to Its 'Rugged' Thunderbolt/USB 3.0 Portable Drives
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There is a 256GB SSD Version of this drive.
You can also get a 1TB Dual SSD RAID-0 in the non-rugged Little Big Disk and you can chain those together and get almost 1GB/sec but prepare for $$$$'s.
But the best buy I know of is the 2TB Dual 7200rpm RAID-0 Little Big Disk. I get pretty blazing speeds with that drive that's way faster than I can get with USB3.
At least they used to have that.
But I think it was extra sleeves you had to purchase separately.
They still have them, all three for $16.79.
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Thanks, I appreciate the effort, Although RAID-0 looks great in the LBD, I am talking small form factor bus powered drives, the LBD's are a pound and a half and need external juice. It would be interesting to know model drive the 256 SSD is, it might make a bit of difference to know in terms of hashing out actual performance.
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Why is everyone complaining about the 5400 rpm. Is there a HDD manufacture out the that makes a 7200 rpm 2.5" 2TB HDD?
Thunderbolt is faster than my USB2 ports on my 2011 MacBook Pro. The USB3 port lets me hook up to machine without TB. It's bus powered. Since my iTunes library doesn't fit on my internal drives anymore it's nice to have large capacity easily portable drive. My Seagate 1.5TB drive has only 420GB left on it and I still have more TV show and Movies to add to it.
A 1TB 2.5" goes for about $80 on Newegg and the only 2TB 2.5" HDD I can find is a WD that goes for $180. So the $70 increase over the 1TB version of the Lacie "Rugged" is not that bad.
Thunderbolt is faster than my USB2 ports on my 2011 MacBook Pro. The USB3 port lets me hook up to machine without TB. It's bus powered. Since my iTunes library doesn't fit on my internal drives anymore it's nice to have large capacity easily portable drive. My Seagate 1.5TB drive has only 420GB left on it and I still have more TV show and Movies to add to it.
A 1TB 2.5" goes for about $80 on Newegg and the only 2TB 2.5" HDD I can find is a WD that goes for $180. So the $70 increase over the 1TB version of the Lacie "Rugged" is not that bad.
And after all that sturm and drang, it will still sell, and people will purchase this drive.
Lots of misunderstandings and perhaps wrong conclusions being drawn.
It is what it is: a 2TB bus powered drive with both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interfaces. Even though it is only 5400 RPM, note well that it is still faster than smaller capacity 7200 RPM drives fom just a year or so ago. The RPM has more impact on latency than throughput. Platter density determines throughput.
Yes, an SSD version makes more sense, but there aren't even any 1TB SSD bus powered USB or Thunderbolt drives yet. There are now 256GB and 512GB SSD bus powered drives available. El Gato announced a 512GB version with both USB and Thunderbolt ports for only $899 - http://www.elgato.com/storage/thunderbolt-drive-512gb
The good news: all those who have USB 3.0 interfaces on their computers are all set as they have cheaper alternatives.
Finally, I think the prosumer and professional users will be snapping this drive up.
Lots of misunderstandings and perhaps wrong conclusions being drawn.
It is what it is: a 2TB bus powered drive with both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 interfaces. Even though it is only 5400 RPM, note well that it is still faster than smaller capacity 7200 RPM drives fom just a year or so ago. The RPM has more impact on latency than throughput. Platter density determines throughput.
Yes, an SSD version makes more sense, but there aren't even any 1TB SSD bus powered USB or Thunderbolt drives yet. There are now 256GB and 512GB SSD bus powered drives available. El Gato announced a 512GB version with both USB and Thunderbolt ports for only $899 - http://www.elgato.com/storage/thunderbolt-drive-512gb
The good news: all those who have USB 3.0 interfaces on their computers are all set as they have cheaper alternatives.
Finally, I think the prosumer and professional users will be snapping this drive up.
Some older Macs don't have USB3 but do have TB.
Also for those who use external drives as boot disks, while you can boot from both USB3 and TB, some people prefer booting using the TB interface since it supports AHCI commands that are not passed over USB3 (like Trim).
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Why, because you think it is all about speed?
The TB interface is flexible. Speed is only one of the benefits it gives you. If you boot off these drives, TB is preferable to USB.
However, osx11 has confirmed it. He knows best how other people should spend their money. The extra font size really shows he's serious.
Only one port so no daisy chaining
I have the Mini rugged 1 Terabyte....I got it since sometimes I end up with three external drives connected and having an alternative high speed I/O like Thunderbolt was nice. SO yeah just to feel cool XD . I bought them out of sheer surprise! Now I'm so cool because....OMG I HAVE A GREY BUMPER LACIE DRIVE!! Sadly they don't fit my Mini rugged which is what I use more often now...if anyone is wondering the different color bumpers for the regular Rugged triple are buried on B&H's website under "Hard drive accessories" or something like that.
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I think the biggest issue here is the price. If they were selling these for $49, I bet no one would be complaining. That's the biggest problem here: We aren't getting much bang for that price. Sure, I would rather have a Thunderbolt drive to free up USB/Firewire ports on my computer, but for $300 I'd rather invest in two hard drives using USB/Firewire.
When are we going to see Thunderbolt 2 drives?
At this rate, it seems kind of dumb to buy a Thunderbolt 1 external, especially with normal spinning hard-disks. Either go for USB 3 or wait for Thunderbolt 2, ideally with more affordable SSD options...
At this rate, it seems kind of dumb to buy a Thunderbolt 1 external, especially with normal spinning hard-disks. Either go for USB 3 or wait for Thunderbolt 2, ideally with more affordable SSD options...
No wonder Thunderbolt doesn't kick off. Three years later and they still charge an arm and a leg for it.
Almost feels like even Intel does not even try to make it popular. Not even in their own Ultrabooks.
As time progress, price should be cheaper. End of story.
Almost feels like even Intel does not even try to make it popular. Not even in their own Ultrabooks.
As time progress, price should be cheaper. End of story.
I think you have grossly underestimated the cost of a bare 2.5" 2TB hard drive.
If Lacie was selling these for $49 they'd be losing at least $100 just on the drive alone, not even including the cost of the case or the TB cable (which they include).
If they were selling them for $49 I'd buy up as many as they could make and then sell the bare drives on ebay and triple my money.
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Why?
Even the fastest SSDs (PCIe) aren't able to saturate TB1.
You then talk about "more affordable" SSDs - but any new SSD that would be able to take advantage of TB2 speeds (i.e., faster sustained IO than TB1) would certainly not be cheap.
There's no need for TB2 for consumer SSDs unless you are going to build a RAID set of them... and even then, if you're doing that "affordable" is not a word you'll be throwing around.
Thunderbolt 2 external drives...thats a good one! LOL. SSD's in external Thunderbolt 1 chassis's are largely still bottle necked by the SATAIII controller, if you have an external SSD drive go to your system info and see if under thunderbolt the device mentions SATA, it usually will. Only way to use Thunderbolt 2 would be dual VERY high performance SSD's in RAID 0, typical PCIe SSD's are barely reaching Thunderbolt 1 bandwidth. What I want LaCie to do is add dual thunderbolt ports to their drives so we can daisy chain, that would be the main use over USB 3 since the newer TB drives don't have FW800 and even if they did I wouldn't like it since its slower and the FW800 connector is ALWAYS super loose . But yeah daisy chained spinning disks in a thunderbolt chain could make for an epic RAID if the bus could provide the power.
. But yeah daisy chained spinning disks in a thunderbolt chain could make for an epic RAID if the bus could provide the power.You're grossly taking me too seriously. I was exaggerating to make a point, I wasn't being serious.
Two connection options trumps one
Apart from the stuff that has already been said about TB being bi-directional I'd also like to point out that should either port become damaged, you have a second way to connect. I will never buy a portable drive with a single interface again after having a USB2 port go down on a drive with no other option. I always bought the triple interface LaCie ruggedise (and never had a failure) and now I own a couple of the 1TB dual USB3 and TB1 versions. They work and they work well which makes them value for my money.
Apart from the stuff that has already been said about TB being bi-directional I'd also like to point out that should either port become damaged, you have a second way to connect. I will never buy a portable drive with a single interface again after having a USB2 port go down on a drive with no other option. I always bought the triple interface LaCie ruggedise (and never had a failure) and now I own a couple of the 1TB dual USB3 and TB1 versions. They work and they work well which makes them value for my money.
Seagate is stopping production of 2.5" 7200 RPM drives, so don't expect that kind of thing from LaCie.
