This. Particularly when they're selling regular (slow) hard drives that won't really take advantage of the speed of the bus, when for many users SSD makes much more sense.
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LaCie Thunderbolt-Enabled Little Big Disk Available from Apple
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This. Particularly when they're selling regular (slow) hard drives that won't really take advantage of the speed of the bus, when for many users SSD makes much more sense.
I see what you mean, though wouldn't there be an overall advantage (compared to FW800) with both discs being able to read and write flat out?
BTW, according to Macworld, LaCie are claiming 190MBps
Also the 2TB version is using 5400RPM drives, seems a bit cheap to be putting in an expensive product.
Keep in mind that the theory of TB is to be one port for your monitor, video card, and external drives. If you have multiple SSD external drives saturating your TB port what will that do to your external monitor?
Therefore the slower the drive the better.
Therefore the slower the drive the better.
Sounds bad, but there's also the RAID controller, the Thunderbolt controller (with pass-through and DisplayPort), PSU, cooling, and a pretty high-speed aluminum housing.
Yes, still a bit up there, but it's far more performance than you'll get from any other external hard drive in that price range for now. Prices will go down with competition.
Also can't use a nonthunderbolt display... If you want to use a macbook pro with a regular non thunderbolt monitor you have to decide whether to use the thunderbolt drive or a regular display. You can't have both unless you have a thunderbolt monitor as well. That stinks.
If you want to use a macbook pro with a regular non thunderbolt monitor you have to decide whether to use the thunderbolt drive or a regular display. You can't have both unless you have a thunderbolt monitor as well. That stinks. 
Well, I'm glad to see that TB is priced to compete against USB3! Holy Cow, I bought a 2 TB USB3 Drive (Passport maybe?) for a Windows machine a few weeks ago for $89.99 @ BB. While I know that TB is faster, this drive was portable, fast, and 2TB!
I don't know what justifies that cost of this setup because the drives are cheap, the enclosure is cheap, and the electronics can't be that much.
Plus, another $50.00 for the cable! Ouch!
C'mon USB3 to TB cable!
-P
I don't know what justifies that cost of this setup because the drives are cheap, the enclosure is cheap, and the electronics can't be that much.
Plus, another $50.00 for the cable! Ouch!
C'mon USB3 to TB cable!
-P
Also can't use a nonthunderbolt display...
The Thunderbolt port is backwards compatible with the mini-displayport.
As far as I've read not on other drives. Only if the monitor is the first in the chain, but if you have a monitor plugged in, you no longer have a thunderbolt drive to use if you have a regular mini-display port adapter plugged in. You can't plug your minidisplay port into the thunderbolt drive.
I've read the same things, but according to LaCie's site, you *can* do this. See here: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10549 and scroll all the way down. They've got their LaCie 324i display using mDP at the end of the daisy chain.
I thought MacWorld was able to connect an Apple Cinema Display to the Pegasus drive? You can't plug it into the TB Display, but the ACD will work further down the daisy chain.
Anyway, what's interesting is being able to daisy chain the drives together to increase throughput even more.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10549
Highlights
10 Gbit/s Thunderbolt interface
Two 500GB (1TB capacity) SATA hard drives
Preconfigured RAID0 strip set (RAID 1 and JBOD capable)
Dual Thunderbolt ports for daisy chaining up to six compatible storage devices together
Mini DisplayPort backward compatible for daisy chaining with other digital devices such as monitors and compatible cameras
Solid aluminum enclosure
Compact size for easy portability
I'm a little disappointed in these drives. The speed is good, but not great in Thunderbolt terms, the drives do not appear to be easily replaceable (even though it supports RAID 1 mode, but what's the point?), and it's not exactly cheap.
Even though the Pegasus R4 is expensive, it seems like a better way to go if you can afford it. 4 drives instead of 2 increases flexibility for setup (you can go RAID 5 or RAID 10, for example, and get both speed and data redundancy), the speeds are much faster than the LaCie, and the drives are hot-swappable. One fails, you pop another in and you're good.
Barefeats tested the Pegasus drives and the R4 is considerably faster even in RAID 5 mode (data redundancy) than the LaCie claims for RAID 0 mode (no data protection). And it's 2.5x-3x faster in RAID 0 mode, meaning even two LaCie's paired up probably don't beat it for around the same price. Unless there's a bunch of others coming soon, I'll probably bite the bullet on the Pegasus.
Even though the Pegasus R4 is expensive, it seems like a better way to go if you can afford it. 4 drives instead of 2 increases flexibility for setup (you can go RAID 5 or RAID 10, for example, and get both speed and data redundancy), the speeds are much faster than the LaCie, and the drives are hot-swappable. One fails, you pop another in and you're good.
Barefeats tested the Pegasus drives and the R4 is considerably faster even in RAID 5 mode (data redundancy) than the LaCie claims for RAID 0 mode (no data protection). And it's 2.5x-3x faster in RAID 0 mode, meaning even two LaCie's paired up probably don't beat it for around the same price. Unless there's a bunch of others coming soon, I'll probably bite the bullet on the Pegasus.
Why is 5400rpm faster than 7200rpm?
Ok this is strange...
First I want to point out to everyone that Apple's website is selling the 7200rpm drives. And the description says that "it delivers astonishing transfer rates of up to 251 MB/s".
According to LaCie's site ( http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10549 ), here are the data transfer rates:
2 questions:
1) Why the discrepancy between the transfer speed listed on Apple's site vs. LaCie's site?
2) Why the heck is 5400rpm faster than 7200rpm?
Ok this is strange...
First I want to point out to everyone that Apple's website is selling the 7200rpm drives. And the description says that "it delivers astonishing transfer rates of up to 251 MB/s".
According to LaCie's site ( http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10549 ), here are the data transfer rates:
2 questions:
1) Why the discrepancy between the transfer speed listed on Apple's site vs. LaCie's site?
2) Why the heck is 5400rpm faster than 7200rpm?
You're way over-stating the current speed of 2.5 inch platter drives.
Tom's Hardware
Note that the fastest "average" speed in the current lineup is right at 90, and most are in the 80s? Peak speeds are largely irrelevant and have little bearing on actual real-world performance.
No way this drive has sustained 150+ write speeds.
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Also in the realm of harddrives, yes, modern drives can push in excess of 100MB/sec... Under ideal conditions, with large amounts of data (sustained read/write speed)... Unless youre pushing large chunks of data to the drive youre not typically going to saturate a fw800 connection.
Right now i think anybody buying a TB drive is paying an early adopter fee, nothing more. LaCie has always been overpriced anyway.
Sneakz said:
Also in the realm of harddrives, yes, modern drives can push in excess of 100MB/sec... Under ideal conditions, with large amounts of data (sustained read/write speed)... Unless youre pushing large chunks of data to the drive youre not typically going to saturate a fw800 connection.
Right now i think anybody buying a TB drive is paying an early adopter fee, nothing more. LaCie has always been overpriced anyway.
On the one hand, I'm glad to see TB items starting to hit the market. A new standard isn't much good until companies start utilizing it.
On the other hand, a $400 Raid 0 device with a pair of 5400RPM disks isn't very inspiring. The cost/benefit ratio compared to a USB device just isn't there yet.
As much as I want to see what the SSD models can do, the price tag will be staggering right out of the gate. Could be a while before we see much practical benefit of the TB, beyond docking/daisy chaining on laptops.
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On the other hand, a $400 Raid 0 device with a pair of 5400RPM disks isn't very inspiring. The cost/benefit ratio compared to a USB device just isn't there yet.
As much as I want to see what the SSD models can do, the price tag will be staggering right out of the gate. Could be a while before we see much practical benefit of the TB, beyond docking/daisy chaining on laptops.
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That's an excellent way of putting it.
Thunderbolt showed its promise today for me. We had to go to the Apple Store for my wife's MBA and I forgot to do a full backup before we left. Connected it to my iMac via TB and copied 205GB in under an hour. In fact, it was waiting on my iMac's HD more than anything as I watched the disk access.
How did you connect it? If you were using Target Disk Mode, you won't get anywhere near the top speed, as it's severely limited by using EFI (the EFI 2.1 update improved performance, but it's still restricted). Although, as you say, it will also likely be limited by the internal hard drive at some point. My 2007 iMac's internal drive is DOG SLOW, even by 2007 standards.
EDIT: as admanimal says, 205 GB in an hour is about 57 MB/s, which is not really that fast. Barefeats tested an Air transferring in Target Disk Mode over Thunderbolt at 62 MB/s read speed (pre-2.1 update, which just came out), which sounds like just about where you were.
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Just because you can't afford it doesn't mean it's not for pros.
I bought a firewire based Little Big Disk years ago at $500. No regrets. Why? The RAID is computer powered. So if power line is flaky, it does not mess with the drive.
For example, some people charge $1500 per day doing photography or earn hundreds per few hours of djing.
From Lacie Specs
Internal Hard Disk :
7200rpm HDD: 2x professional hard disk drives
5400rpm HDD: 2x hard disk drives
SSD: 2x SSD drives
Technology : Active copper cables (sold separately)
Size : 1.6 x 5.5 x 3.3 in. / 40 x 140 x 85 mm