LaCie Thunderbolt-Enabled Little Big Disk Available from Apple

[jclardy]

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$500 for a 2TB thunderbolt drive? Damn, a 2TB disk alone can be found for $60ish

It is overpriced, but you are comparing it to the wrong thing. This is a RAID drive with an interface that can handle it.

If you want to compare prices, you should at least compare it to two disk RAID 0 externals with either FW800 or eSATA which will be more in the $200 range.

 

[ChrisA]

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.

No, your numbers are wrong. You confuse the interface speed with the mechanical speed of the drive. SATA drives can transfer data between the drive's cache and the computer at the SATA cable speed of 300Mb/s but the magnetic disk platter is almost 10X slower than that

Yes, FW800 maxes out at 65MB/s. because that is the speed of two magnetic disk platters. The bottle neck with FW800 is not the cable. So with a 10X faster cable we will still see 65MB/s

The real advantage of this TB disk drive is that it will daisy chain with other TB devices and reduce the total number of cables and you get "bragging rights"

 

[Consultant]

It is overpriced, but you are comparing it to the wrong thing. This is a RAID drive with an interface that can handle it.

If you want to compare prices, you should at least compare it to two disk RAID 0 externals with either FW800 or eSATA which will be more in the $200 range.

It's also a bus powered RAID that's smaller than one 3.5" drive.

Edit: Not sure if it's bus powered or not.

 

[reputationZed]

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).

RAID 5 is not going to be faster than RAID 0. The advantage of RAID 5 is that it gives you redundancy along with performance. RAID 0 will give you some what better performance at the cost of no redundancy.

 

[scottrichardson]

Can you buy the Pegusus Thunderbolt R4 and R6 without any drives in it? The 4 Bay would be mighty useful if we could stick some 4TB drives in it. I imagine the 4TB drives are going to land at about $200. So 16TB for $1000 + Case.

 

[firestarter]

RAID 5 is not going to be faster than RAID 0. The advantage of RAID 5 is that it gives you redundancy along with performance. RAID 0 will give you some what better performance at the cost of no redundancy.

You are completely correct in the general case - as n disks striped using RAID 0 will indeed be faster than n disks using RAID 5 (with RAID 5 you read n-1 tracks-worth of data per revolution compared to n).

However we weren't talking about the general case, the question was specifically comparing these two disk LaCie setups with the 6 disk RAID 5 pegasus. For that comparison, RAID 5 would indeed be more speedy - especially on read, specifically because of the disparity in number of disks employed.

 

[mac jones]

It's also a bus powered RAID that's smaller than one 3.5" drive.

I read it's NOT buss powered. Not only that, but if you look at the specs it says the adapter is AC.
This is a 2.5" raid drive. I have one in the FW800 variety and it is buss powered (G-Tech).

So i'm going to pass

go figure.

 

[reputationZed]

You are completely correct in the general case - as n disks striped using RAID 0 will indeed be faster than n disks using RAID 5 (with RAID 5 you read n-1 tracks-worth of data per revolution compared to n).

However we weren't talking about the general case, the question was specifically comparing these two disk LaCie setups with the 6 disk RAID 5 pegasus. For that comparison, RAID 5 would indeed be more speedy - especially on read, specifically because of the disparity in number of disks employed.

Fair enough, guess I hadn't fully thought it out. So if I understand what your saying the 6 drive Promise in a RAID 5 set up will be faster than the 4 drive Promise in a RAID 5 set up.

Hopefully OWC will have a reasonably priced bare enclosure out before to long.

 

[Fraaaa]

From the Apple page:

You can even daisy chain multiple Little Big Disks together to increase overall transfer rates. Daisy chain four Little Big Disks with hard drives and reach transfer rates of up to 782 MB/s.

 

[iamkarlp]

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You guys have to remember this is a raid enclosure, which means they will be using raid compatible drives. This is important. No 50$ 1TB jobbers, think 120$+ 1TB drives. Plus markup. Plus the enclosure / raid controller / thunderbolt adapter / support / r&d / etc.

There is no denying this isn't a consumer offering, but it's still a great early adopter price.

The pegasus is a better deal if you can live withthe footprint however.

Karl P

 

[bretm]

FW800 maxes out at 100MB/s for real world transfer rates of just short of 90MB/s. 65 is not even close.

I get about 79 with FW800 and 120 with esata. If you have a true raid controller for esata you can get over 200. And those drives are cheap. So why on earth would we want to pay so much for basically a sata raid speed? I was hoping for more.

 

[vettori]

So if I understand what your saying the 6 drive Promise in a RAID 5 set up will be faster than the 4 drive Promise in a RAID 5 set up.

The specs say Pegasus4 is 500MB/s, Pegasus6 is 800MB/s.

 

[firestarter]

You guys have to remember this is a raid enclosure, which means they will be using raid compatible drives. This is important. No 50$ 1TB jobbers, think 120$+ 1TB drives. Plus markup. Plus the enclosure / raid controller / thunderbolt adapter / support / r&d / etc.

Unfortunately I have my doubts.

LaCie isn't a high end brand... it's a 'designer' brand making pretty products. Sure, they make some well performing gear, but I think you're going to be very disappointed if you expect anything other than consumer level mechanisms in that box.

 

[Consultant]

I read it's NOT buss powered. Not only that, but if you look at the specs it says the adapter is AC.
This is a 2.5" raid drive. I have one in the FW800 variety and it is buss powered (G-Tech).

So i'm going to pass

go figure.

My old drive comes with external power supply. But it was for USB or PCs that don't have bus powered firewire.

 

[Freis968]

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What s ****ing ripoff!!!

 

[DeepIn2U]

I was just talking about this drive at work today.

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?

So who's willing to purchase one of these bad-bwoys and hopes they get the SSD drives. LaCie really screwed up the opportunity here. I hope some low end 250GBx2 or 500GBx2 SSD's come in VERY soon at a cheaper price with same functionality and heat dissipation.

 

[nateo200]

I'd rather buy the enclosure or better yet just a SATA to Thunderbolt adapter or something of the nature than pay that much...way over priced.

 

[manu chao]

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.

What is the point of comparing a single 3.5" 2 TB drive + a simple enclosure with the price of two 2.5" 1 TB drives + RAID controller + enclosure? Of course the former will be cheaper. Why not complain that a 500 GB 2.5" SSD is so much more expensive than 500 GB 3.5" HDD while you are at it?

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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.

To quote LaCie:
"It's even mini DisplayPort backward-compatible so you can, for example, connect your high-end LaCie 324i display directly to your Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series."

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2) Why the heck is 5400rpm faster than 7200rpm?

It has always been like this that larger drives are faster. In this case it seems to just about overcompensate the rpm disadvantage. A larger drive means either higher density which means at the same rpm, the head is travelling over more data in one revolution and/or more platters which means more heads reading things in parallel.

Which alone is reason enough to replace your internal drives with larger ones every couple of years (and as a rule try to get close to the largest drive available), you not only get a capacity increase but also a speed increase.

 

[HiRez]

So who's willing to purchase one of these bad-bwoys and hopes they get the SSD drives. LaCie really screwed up the opportunity here. I hope some low end 250GBx2 or 500GBx2 SSD's come in VERY soon at a cheaper price with same functionality and heat dissipation.

Well, you'll probably be waiting a long time for that, especially since SSD price:capacity ratio change seems to be leveling off a bit. Bare 240/256 GB SD drives are selling for around $400-$500 each, multiply that by 2 and add another $100+ for an enclosure and you're close to $1,000 (which is the price of the 4-drive 4 TB Promise Pegasus R4 by the way). 512 GB SSDs are over $800 each. Granted, the performance of such a setup is phenomenal, but you'll really pay a premium for it. Again, the Pegasus is a good idea here, because you can later on replace the drives with either higher capacity HDDs or with SSDs when the prices drop.

 

[zachlegomaniac]

Figured the price would be crazy. Wish I could just connect my macs with a thunderbolt cable to keep them synced.

 

[jamesryanbell]

I was thinking $199ish for a 2TB model with 7200rpm drives AND the option the buy the enclosure bare.

Dead serious too. I EXPECTED that as standard starting point.

Next.

 

[iamkarlp]

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Thats both a funny and unrealistic expectation. I expected 450 or so and once amazon gets ahold of it I may not be far off.

It's new tech, offering considerable advantages over traditional tech and considerable amounts of R&D.

It's a reasonable starting price.

Karl P

 

[munkery]

It seems the Lacie Little Big Disk product line is pricey regardless of TBolt.

The non-TBolt 1TB model still costs $299.99.

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10278

But, it is obviously not a product targeted towards home users given the RAID support and multiple connectivity options.

So, you're paying $100 for TBolt with the absence of connectivity options TBolt is intended to replace.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H7150

Probably better to wait until TBolt actually supplants those other connectivity options in actual usage and the price comes down to more reasonable levels before buying into the technology.

TBolt does appear to have a higher potential toward longevity unless some other technology supplants PCIe.

 

[lilo777]

It seems the Lacie Little Big Disk product line is pricey regardless of TBolt.

The non-TBolt 1TB model still costs $299.99.

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10278

But, it is obviously not a product targeted towards home users given the RAID support and multiple connectivity options.

So, you're paying $100 for TBolt with the absence of connectivity options TBolt is intended to replace.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H7150

Probably better to wait until TBolt actually supplants those other connectivity options in actual usage and the price comes down to more reasonable levels before buying into the technology.

TBolt does appear to have a higher potential toward longevity unless some other technology supplants PCIe.

It's not $100. Add $50 for a cable and the absurdity of TB peripherals at this point in time becomes obvious.

 

[batchtaster]

you're paying for their brand name

So, they mail you a refund check then?