Lacie thunderbolt drive very slow.

[Herco]

Hey guys,

I am running a late 2011 macbook pro with a 128SSD, with optibay, and 750GB internal disk.

I recently got a Lacie thunderbolt drive and it is very, very slow. It is the Little Big disk with 2 x 1TB disks inside.

I saw online people getting read and write speeds of around 100mb/s. I am only getting around 10 and below. It takes roughly 20 minutes to copy a 2GB file from my 750gb internal drive to the connected lacie drive!

I formatted the Lacie drive and re-created the Raid set up and the speeds are still excruciatingly slow.

I do not want to trash such an expensive disk!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

No need to trash it, you could return it or ask LaCie for a replacement.

As for enclosure, have you tried without RAID?

 

[Herco]

Thanks for the reply.

I tried with and without raid, same result.

The disk is about a 2 years old, so I doubt Lacie would replace it? It was bought by my dad at a iStore here in South Africa.

I hope I can get this sorted, as it is an expensive disk to replace.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Different TB cable perhaps?

 

[Herco]

Hmmm... I also thought could be a probable cause.

It would definitely explain why my test speeds vary so much. The current cable is in exquisite condition though...

I will take the drive to the apple store and test it with another TB cable. I would be happy if it is only a 30$ fix.

 

[flynz4]

Hmmm... I also thought could be a probable cause.

It would definitely explain why my test speeds vary so much. The current cable is in exquisite condition though...

I will take the drive to the apple store and test it with another TB cable. I would be happy if it is only a 30$ fix.

Also test it on a different system as well while at the Apple Store. That might pinpoint the problem to either the drive or something in your system.

/Jim

 

[g4cube]

To confirm that drive performance is OK, run the Black Magic Disk Test on both the internal drive, SSD, and the Thunderbolt drive. The benchmark uses RAM to measure performance on the drive alone, so is not dependent on other copying/performance limits.

Note well, when copying from another HDD, your speed is limited by:
- speed of the other drive
- round-trip copying from other drive to OS buffers, and from OS buffers back to the Thunderbolt drive.

Also, copying many small files will be slower than copying few large files.

 

[50548]

Thanks for the reply.

I tried with and without raid, same result.

The disk is about a 2 years old, so I doubt Lacie would replace it? It was bought by my dad at a iStore here in South Africa.

I hope I can get this sorted, as it is an expensive disk to replace.

If you are correct about the model, Little Big Disks have a 3-year warranty. You should be able to have them fixed/exchanged for free.

http://www.lacie.com/intl/support/support_manifest.htm?id=10549