LaCie Little Big Disk SATA controller speed limited?

[tpluth]

I have a few LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt enclosures. They all came with SATA II (3Gbps) drives. I recently had a drive die in one and since it's out of warranty, I replaced both drives with 2 Seagate 2TB drives, which are supposedly SATA III (6Gbps). System profiler is reporting that both drive negotiated to 3Gbps speed, though.

Just for grins, I tried with an OCZ Vector 150 SSD and got the same results.

What does it take to get these to negotiate to 6Gbps?

 

[Dandu]

The first SSD version and the HDD version are limited to 3 Gb/s. It's a firmware limitation : LaCie can change the firmware, but i have not seen a public release of the tool.

The second generation SSD of the Little Big Disk has not this problem.

 

[hfg]

I have some of the older LBD enclosures as well, and they seem to be optimized for hard disks drives rather than SSDs which I put in them, although they are still fairly fast.

However, if your intent is to load them with larger 2TB hard disk drives, I wouldn't think the interface speed would matter much as your data transfer rates would be limited by the disk drive itself, which is well below the SATA interface maximum rating.

 

[g4cube]

...
However, if your intent is to load them with larger 2TB hard disk drives, I wouldn't think the interface speed would matter much as your data transfer rates would be limited by the disk drive itself, which is well below the SATA interface maximum rating.

Exactly what hfg said.

HDD performance wont change whether SATA II or III.

 

[tpluth]

I guess you buy LaCie for the esthetics, not the functionality.

I was really disappointed when I put an SSD in one and only got about 230MB/sec.

 

[g4cube]

But when LaCie chose to offer new configurations with faster SSDs, they altered the design, adding SATA III, solving your perceived problem With the Little Big Disk. Look for that version rather than the original.

And today, with the black Little Big Disk, they brought PCIe SSDs to the mix, taking full advantage of the Thunderbolt2 interface.

Esthetics and performance sometimes do coexist.