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LaCie Thunderbolt-Enabled Little Big Disk Available from Apple

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Apr 12, 2001
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LaCie's first Thunderbolt hard drives are finally available, more than 6 months after Apple put its first Thunderbolt-enabled Macs on sale.

The Apple Online Store is offering 1TB and 2TB Little Big Disks for $399.95 and $499.95 respectively, both shipping in 1-2 weeks. 9to5Mac reports that these drives are already available at some Apple Retail Stores.

In June, LaCie promised SSD drives with Thunderbolt this summer ("a question of weeks"), but those have yet to be released.

Though the hard drives are available on Apple's website, LaCie seems to have pulled its product page for the Little Big Disk, and doesn't list the product on its online store.

Article Link: LaCie Thunderbolt-Enabled Little Big Disk Available from Apple
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/20/lacie-thunderbolt-enabled-little-big-disk-available-from-apple/
$400 for two 500GB drives and a thunderbolt connection? Ouch

Edit: FYI two drives are available for $60 each on newegg. $340 for TB?
 
Ouch. Kinda (really, really) spendy. And I don't think the little big disks are particularly user upgradeable to put in larger hard drives?

I'd love to have one - hopefully independent thunderbolt enclosures aren't that far away.
 
Battlefield Fan said:
$400 for two 500GB drives and a thunderbolt connection? Ouch

Edit: FYI two drives are available for $60 each on newegg. $340 for TB?
Click to expand...

The main question is: what is the real performance advantage of these drives compared to standard FW800 ones?

I mean, SSD-less drives as the ones launched today...can anyone tell me? Is the fast TB cable enough to show considerable speed differences when it comes to standard 7200rpm drives?
 
I was waiting for this but I'm seriously considering the Pegasus for its better performance and bigger size (I know it costs more).

Having two hard drives it can't fill the thunderbolt potential high bandwidth.
 
BRLawyer said:
The main question is: what is the real performance advantage of these drives compared to standard FW800 ones?

I mean, SSD-less drives as the ones launched today...can anyone tell me? Is the fast TB cable enough to show considerable speed differences when it comes to standard 7200rpm drives?
Click to expand...

Yes.

A standard mechanical hard drive these days can push data at well over 100MB/s. This LaCie design places two in parallel, doubling the throughput.

In the real world, FW800 maxes out at 65MB/s.

So expect these to be 3 or more times faster than FW800.
 
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$500 for a 2TB thunderbolt drive? Damn, a 2TB disk alone can be found for $60ish
 
BRLawyer said:
How come, considering that Pegasus uses the same 7200rpm drives? RAID 5 doesn't make it any faster, I am sure...
Click to expand...

It does. The more drives you parallel, the faster your throughput.

We're talking 4 or 6 drives (3 or 5 data drives) vs just 2.

The pegasus uses full sized drives too - which are faster (they're not the same drives).
 
I don't get it.

Apple is catering less to the pro's, yet insist on a technology that is utter expensive for cost of entry.

Might be worth it for some, but TB to me is far away until I see some cost to time benefit of >$400 for my time to transfer. Heck, I'm not James Bond on a train ready to explode.

Not saying that many don't appreciate it, the speeds are mindblowing; but really $1k to enter on the pegasus line, and now Lacie with this- plus the $50 cable to boot. I just bought a FW lacie 2TB for 169 on clearance.

IDK, are a lot of users biting on this?
 
Was waiting for a Pegasus, but caved in on a $290 ($240 after rebate) 4-bay FW800 Drobo this weekend.

Figure I'd use Drobo to back up all my shizz, and buy a cheaper/smaller Thunderbolt drive to edit off of. But $500 for 2TB? Yikes! $1000 for a 4-bay Pegasus w/ user-replaceable drives is an insanely better value.
 
firestarter said:
Yes.

A standard mechanical hard drive these days can push data at well over 100MB/s. This LaCie design places two in parallel, doubling the throughput.

In the real world, FW800 maxes out at 65MB/s.

So expect these to be 3 or more times faster than FW800.
Click to expand...

FW800 maxes out at 100MB/s for real world transfer rates of just short of 90MB/s. 65 is not even close.
 
Don't forget you're paying for their brand name and the Thunderbolt adapter, etc. LaCie has never been a company to sell prices at the lower end of the spectrum. I'm sure we'll see more Thunderbolt hard drives (and hopefully separate hard drive cases) soon, at lower prices.

Now I'm starting think of what Jobs really meant when he said "Affordable adapters" when he was referring to Thunderbolt... :rolleyes:
 
Sneakz said:
FW800 maxes out at 100MB/s for real world transfer rates of just short of 90MB/s. 65 is not even close.
Click to expand...

FW800 has a fair amount of non-data traffic which makes full speed impossible. Yes, modern drives and setups are probably a bit faster than the 65MB/s I quoted - but even in recent tests Barefeats barely manages to get past 80MB/s:

http://www.barefeats.com/tbolt01.html

The important point is however that a single mechanical hard drive has been able to saturate a FW800 connection for a number of years. TBolt removes that limitation, and is a very worthwhile improvement (more so for multiple drives)
 
Mike Oxard said:
I'm waiting for a Seagate GoFlex Thunderbolt adapter, think that'll be the most useful and flexible solution.

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When you are transferring from one external to another for example.
Click to expand...

Even when you're transferring from one external to another external the speed will only match the speed of the Hard drive.

This is why I don't get Thunderbolt. There has to be a new design for hard drives. Even faster read/writes that SSD's.
 
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