Lacie LittleBigDisk SSD mod

[Mattstrete]

After one of the two Hitachi HDDs in my LittleBigDisk went haywire (after I dropped it) I bit the bullet and, to save my investment, have ordered two OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSDs, which will hopefully be arriving tomorrow.

I have already disassembled the drive once, immediately after I dropped it about a year ago and it wouldn't mount. (I'm surprised it lasted this long, but it was only after using a new program last night that I was warned about its imminent failure - I won't mention the program by name as I have already been called a spammer once, long ago, for doing something similar on this forum

I really hope the two SSDs are compatible with the enclosure, but if it works, I will have over 1GB of SSD storage plugged into my rMBP.

Any thoughts on whether or not I should risk disabling the nasty little fan? Any chance of overheating?

Mattstrete

 

[Mattstrete]

Success!!

Check out these speeds!!!

 

[thecounthahaha]

Cool.

Can I clarify a few things?

Is this with a thunderbolt HDD Little big disk?
How easy was it to take apart and do the changes?
Are you running it as one big drive or 2?
Would this work with the new m500 960gb drives for a (nearly) 2tb ssd JBOD..?

But mainly how easy was it to do?

 

[Giuly]

Cool.

Can I clarify a few things?

Is this with a thunderbolt HDD Little big disk?
How easy was it to take apart and do the changes?
Are you running it as one big drive or 2?
Would this work with the new m500 960gb drives for a (nearly) 2tb ssd JBOD..?

But mainly how easy was it to do?

Yes.
Four screws or so.
It's too slow for a RAID0, so that's the speed of a single SSD.
Yes.

It would be even more impressive if you'd RAID0 the disks in Disk Util like LaCie does by default.
http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/ss/raidstripe_4.htm

 

[Mattstrete]

1. Yes. It was originally a 2TB Thunderbolt HDD (the first version with a SATAII interface inside). The two HDDs were Samsung 1TB 5400rpm units.

2. Very easy. I assume, however, that the warranty is voided as soon as one opens up the enclosure. I will be happy to post a guide if anyone's interested. All you need is a small Philips screwdriver.

3. I am running it as a striped RAID0 array, so it is mounted as a single 1.02TB volume and benefits from RAID speeds.

4. I don't know. I think I took a chance by putting in the two OCZ Vertex 4s. I have read that the more recent versions of the LittleBigDisk have a SATAIII interface, so using SATAIII SSDs on a more recent version would probably yield even higher speeds (although the enclosure's internal bus may nevertheless pose a bottleneck).

If anyone has found an app to monitor the SSD temps inside the enclosure I would be grateful for a link. iStat menu doesn't pick them up.

 

[Mattstrete]

Actually, considering that it's the model with a SATAII, rather than a SATAIII interface, the speeds are pretty good. Googling this site seems to show that speeds more towards 400MB/s are to be expected with the SATAII interface, even when using SATAIII SSDs such as the Crucial M4.

I stand to be corrected of course but maybe I won't have my bubble burst just yet?

 

[Giuly]

LaCie uses AJA:

 

[Mattstrete]

So, now does Mattstrete ;-)

 

[Mattstrete]

@Giuly -
That screenshot you've referred to is from the Lacie website and reflects the speeds to be expected via the new SATAIII enclosure.

So, my speeds, especially the read speed (which is higher) are pretty impressive given that my two SSDs are connected to the older SATAII bus.

 

[desantii]

I had the older SATAII model and bought a SATAIII one, returned it after the SATAII one was just as fast, I get 450/480 in blackmagic with intel 335s.

The SATAIII out of the box had slower writes