LaCie Big Disk Triple Interface vs. Big Disk Extreme

[grrr223]

I currently own the LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme 250GB Triple Interface

and am looking to upgrade to one of these two:

• LaCie Big Disk 500GB Triple Interface
• LaCie Big Disk Extreme 500GB FireWire 400 and FireWire 800

Can anyone here provide any help making my decision?

I will use it to store my iTunes music library. And since I am in the process of ripping almost 1,000 CDs in Apple Lossless format, it will be about 300 GB or so when I'm done. The Triple Interface one has USB 2.0, which might be useful if I ever decide to get a Network Storage Link for USB 2.0 Disk Drives, but I will normally be connecting to it using Firewire 800.

How do these two drive differ from the one I currently own, i.e. what does d2 mean? And what is the difference between the two? The Big Disk Extreme claims to be faster than the Big Disk Triple Interface, but does that affect me as I am simply storing music on it?

They are both the exact same cost, so I was wondering which of these features matters the most, or if anyone has had any experience with any of them.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Blue Velvet]

We use a LaCie 320gb Big Disk Extreme FW400 & 800 at work for our network backup.

It has one of the most solidly constructed external drives cases I've seen and on FW 800 it flies... we love it and would unhesitatingly recommend its bigger brother.

p.s. That's one hell of a ripping session. How long do you think it's going to take? And are you going to do everything -- including that album that you never play?

 

[grrr223]

Thank you for your endorsement. I guess what this comes down to is whether I want a USB 2.0 port or if I want the faster Firewire 800 ports on the Big Disk Extreme.

To answer your questions, my beloved LaCie d2 drive died earlier this year and I lost all my music that wasn't on my iPod. The good news is that LaCie was very good about fixing my drive under warranty and getting it back to me good as new (sans music of course) in about a week. So, since I have to re-rip my music to begin with, I figured I'd just do it once and do it at lossless, and if I want lower bitrate versions for my iPod it is very easy to re-encode them without having to go back to the disks.

Anyway...yes, it is a big project, but it is going smoothly. I am about halfway through it. And actually, I have been amazed at how few bad CDs I have acquired. And I have been just flat out getting rid of the CDs that I will never listen to.

But actually, that has been the problem, if it isn't on my iPod, I never listen to it. So "that CD I never listen to" isn't a statement about how much I like that CD, but simply a sad fact that I don't listen to Compact Discs any more. So once this project is complete i will be a VERY happy person.

I also have an Aiport Express which I love so by ripping all my CDs at lossless, I am able to use itunes to manage all of my music at the exact same quality as if I were listening to the original discs.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Well, if you intend to stay with pro-level Macs for the foreseeable future then FW800 is the absolute biz.

The LaCie also came with all necessary cables, not just a FW400.
No biggie, but nice nevertheless.

 

[Counterfit]

Get the FW800!! Do it! I have two FW800 OWC drives and daaaamn they're fast. Not build as solidly as the LaCie drives, but I don't really need that (well, not right now anyway )

 

[papersushi]

It comes down to if you need USB 2.0, Triple interface has both firewire 400 and 800 and USB 2.0 just to be clear. You cannot go wrong with either D2 or Big Disk Extreme as long as you are not getting the Porsche one. Porsche's name sounds nice, but its casing is made in plastic, is no comparison to D2 or Big Disk which has the alumnium casing. Very very durable, you can stand on it with no problem. LaCie is the way to go.

 

[live4ever]

I think the only real differences are the USB 2.0 on the triple, and the extreme has a hardware RAID 0 array of the two 250GB drives which will make it faster over FW800.

 

[grrr223]

What does the RAID 0 give me?

Here is how I use my 250 GB drive:
150GB - iTunes Music Library
80 GB - Backup of my Powerbook

And this is how I intend to use my new one:
500GB Drive
-250GB - iTunes Music Library
-80GB - Backup of my Powerbook
-170GB - Scratch disk, Rip DVDs, other random stuff
250GB Drive
-Backup of iTunes Music Library

I know this might seem a little bit overkill, but after losing my hard drive this summer, I will NEVER go through that again. I know there are other ways of backing up the music, i.e. burning it to DVD etc., but even they are time consuming and not super cheap, and in the end you don't have a perfect backup. For example, say I backup all my iTunes to DVD, that first of all would take about 50 DVDs, and if I change any of the tags on my songs then the backup won't match my music library.

In the end, my time is worth about $200 to have a complete mirror of my iTunes music library which will total about 12-15,000 songs all perfectly tagged and will provide me with days or even weeks of musical bliss.

I guess in the end the faster Firewire 800 doesn't matter much in my application, although if I ever do get a G5 desktop, it would make a nice complement if I ever started doing video editing or something like that. I think I'll just get the Triple Interface drive for now and settle for the "slower" FW800 !!!

Wow, granted some of it is backup so it doesn't really count, but I will soon have 830 GB of hard drive space, that's a lot !

Thanks for your help guys (and girls?).

 

[Rod Rod]

For example, say I backup all my iTunes to DVD, that first of all would take about 50 DVDs, and if I change any of the tags on my songs then the backup won't match my music library.

I'm not sure what you mean by "tags" on your songs, but if you change things around in your iTunes music library, such as rearranging genres and creating new playlists / smart playlists, that won't affect the music files themselves. What changes is just your iTunes Music Library data and XML files. So the answer to keeping everything up-to-date is burn those DVDs, and keep a CD or Zip disk aronud to back up those two files every once in a while... of course if those two files are on your internal hard drive you'll be fine if let's say your hard drive crashes again.

I recommend going for the Extreme because you'll notice the difference between 55MB/s and 88MB/s once you have a FW800 computer. Attaching to a network over USB 2 sounds nice but you could also make the drive available to your network by way of your computer's ethernet port. If that port is already taken up, you could add another one with a PCI card.

 

[grrr223]

What I mean is this:

The only way that iTunes has of associating a song in my iTunes library with its file is by tags. So the problem that burning to DVD still allows for is this:

1. I rip a song to iTunes
2. I burn it to DVD
3. I change the tags (something other than the stuff that iTunes stores)
4. My hard drive crashes (I know, cuz it just happened)

If I go to restore my music from the DVDs, iTunes is now unable to associate that song file as being the same song in my library (and all of it's meta data).

What happened last time when my hard drive crashed is that I used iPodRip to restore my music library (well, about 5,500 of the 12,000 songs I had lost) and iTunes recognized them all because they had the same file names and tags.

Anyway...I know I'm being kinda anal, but I really do see

$200 plus almost no additional time = perfect backup

as better than

$50-$100 for dvds + a significant amount of time = a less than perfect backup

 

[Jo-Kun]

if you're on a Desktop forget the FireWire400/800 or USB2.0 D2 Drives, get the external 400GB SATA drive with PCI host adaptor... much faster data transfer... since its as fast as any internal (they have allso the 74GB 10000Rpm drive in SATA version, if there's the need for speed ;-) )
or get a internal 400GB SATA drive (when using a G5 off course...) to sit next to your 250GB one...

J

 

[grrr223]

I'm using a Powerbook, so no internal drives for me .

 

[Rod Rod]

What I mean is this:

The only way that iTunes has of associating a song in my iTunes library with its file is by tags. So the problem that burning to DVD still allows for is this:

1. I rip a song to iTunes
2. I burn it to DVD
3. I change the tags (something other than the stuff that iTunes stores)
4. My hard drive crashes (I know, cuz it just happened)

If I go to restore my music from the DVDs, iTunes is now unable to associate that song file as being the same song in my library (and all of it's meta data).

What happened last time when my hard drive crashed is that I used iPodRip to restore my music library (well, about 5,500 of the 12,000 songs I had lost) and iTunes recognized them all because they had the same file names and tags.

Anyway...I know I'm being kinda anal, but I really do see

$200 plus almost no additional time = perfect backup

as better than

$50-$100 for dvds + a significant amount of time = a less than perfect backup

Where do you buy your blank DVDs? You're paying way too much. Take a look at shop4tech.com or do a search at dealmac.com.

Anyway, I'm getting my 1TB Bigger Disk Extreme next week. I'm picking up a couple of rackmount SCSI RAIDs as well. All of it is for finishing my current commercial DVD project.

 

[zarquon]

I was talking to a rep from LaCie yesterday about this, as the latest info on their website shows the 'D2 Extreme Triple Interface' only. They have taken the new ( faster ) chipset from the D2 Extreme ( that was only FW 400/800 ) and added it to the Triple interface. The FW 400/800 only drives are being discontinued. The new Extreme Triple interface drives are supposed to have the same speed advantage over FW800 as the previous Extremes.

Z.

 

[Mantat]

if you're on a Desktop forget the FireWire400/800 or USB2.0 D2 Drives, get the external 400GB SATA drive with PCI host adaptor... much faster data transfer... since its as fast as any internal (they have allso the 74GB 10000Rpm drive in SATA version, if there's the need for speed ;-) )
or get a internal 400GB SATA drive (when using a G5 off course...) to sit next to your 250GB one...

J

Not true. There isnt any speed difference between SATA and FW800 unless the SATA are in RAID-0. Even FW800 vs FW400 only make difference on fast HD or big burst. People generaly overestimate the realworld transfert rate of their HD. HDs dont transfert data at their maximum speed all the time, in fact unless you are transfering large files, its more likely using half of its actual speed.

But in case of RAID-0, you are right, SATA is the way to go.

And to the original poster: forget the triple interface thing. FW800 would be better unless you plan to transport the drive to a PC friend's house.

 

[Rod Rod]

I was talking to a rep from LaCie yesterday about this, as the latest info on their website shows the 'D2 Extreme Triple Interface' only.

did you actually look at LaCie's website after talking to that rep? no, you didn't.

that would be nice if the rest of what you said is true, but the first point you made about the "latest info on their website" is false.

 

[zarquon]

did you actually look at LaCie's website after talking to that rep? no, you didn't.

Acctually I did look at LaCie's website before and after talking with the rep.

that would be nice if the rest of what you said is true, but the first point you made about the "latest info on their website" is false.

Again you have jumped to conclusions well before you reviewed the facts.
The image that you copied from the LaCie site does infact show the "Big disk Exteme" with FW400/800 ( no USB ) My post was only refering to the "D2" drives. The D2 extreme FW400/800 is the unit that I had pointed out was no longer listed.

This was all to point out that the chipset from the Extreme drives is now beginning to be used in the triple interface drives - which should be a good thing, don't you think?

Z.

 

[Rod Rod]

zarquon, I read the specs on the 1TB triple interface and it still shows slower FW400 and FW800 speeds compared to the 1TB bigger disk extreme.

show me otherwise. thanks.

 

[zarquon]

zarquon, I read the specs on the 1TB triple interface and it still shows slower FW400 and FW800 speeds compared to the 1TB bigger disk extreme.

show me otherwise. thanks.

If you'll have another look at my posts, my comments have all been about the D2 drives, not the Bigger Disk.
Also, I was talking about the diferences between the "D2 Triple interface" and the "D2 Extreme Triple interface".

You're observation about the 1TB Triple Interface being slower than the 1TB Bigger Disk Extreme are correct ( I never said anything different ). However, my comments were also correct that the D2 Extreme Triple Interface is the same speed as the D2 Extreme - and both are faster than the D2 Triple Interface.

From the LaCie website

LaCie Combines Speed and Versatility in the New d2 Extreme with Triple Interface

September 21, 2004


Extreme speed with super-fast FireWire 800 chipset
Triple Interface connectivity for cross-platform use
Fast data backup and storage of up to 250GB

LaCie pairs its fastest and most versatile external drives to debut the new d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface offering capacities of up to 250GB and a 7200rpm 8MB buffer with larger capacities arriving this winter. Now customers can achieve extreme throughput with FireWire 800 thanks to the fastest and newest Oxford 912 chipset, while also receiving the benefit of additional FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces for easy data transfer between Windows and Mac platforms.

"This latest series of LaCie drives merges the best of previous generations into a portable solution designed to meet any professional or everyday need," says Olivier Mirloup, LaCie Senior Product Manager. "The LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface offers the cross-platform compatibility and speed needed for storage/backup, graphics/imaging work, and video/audio/photo editing."

The LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface comes in the distinct d2 design made of sturdy aluminum alloy that offers improved heat dissipation to help prolong the life of the drive. These rackmountable, high-performance drives are ideal for professionals working with large audio/video projects. Triple interfaces allow people to quickly swap large files between workstations or daisy chain additional devices to the drive for added convenience.

Consider yourself shown.

Z.

Edited to include link to LaCie news page.