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LaCie Thunderbolt Little BigDisk Disassembled - Pics SSD XFer Rates Added

Hi,

do you guys think that t's dangerous to disconnect the little fan (if it's too noisy)? As far as I know, the older little big discs were all passively cooled anyway.

Chris
 
lozion said:
Indeed.

Now, what the heck is OWC waiting for to release a single or dual TB enclosure to go with those fast SATA3 SSD's?
Click to expand...

The Thunderbolt technology is currently in Apple's hands and strictly closed.
If you try to search "Thunderbolt" trademark using this link:
http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp
you will find that is registered by Apple with serial number 85314959
If you try to join the Intel Thunderbolt developers community using this link:
https://thunderbolttechnology.net/
you will receive the answer that you must wait until 2012.
I suspect that OWC and others must wait...
 
Last edited:
stats

Hello,

I just opened my 2TB Lacie Thunderbolt and removed the drives and added an OCZ 240Gb Agility 3 SSD drive. Here are the stats i got with dirve genious. I dont rlaly know how to interpret them. Perhaps someone can suggest what they mean. I will add the other OCZ drive as soon as it comes in. Graph is attached from drive genius.

Sincerely,
BIll
 

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So, how noisy is the Little Big Disc Thunderbolt 2TB? Does it really sound like a hair dryer?

That's why I was asking about disconnecting the fan.

Cheers,

Chris
 
Pegasus versus Little Big Disk

Installing the same pair of 6Gb/s SSDs as RAID 0 in both the Promise Pegasus R4 and LaCie LBD Thunderbolt, I learned...

1. The large sustained write speed of the Pegasus is 74% faster in QuickBench's 1G Custom test and 30% faster in the AJA System Test (2048x1556 10-bit RGB, 4G test size).

2. The small random transfer speed (QuickBench 4K to 1M mix, avg 5 cycles) of the Pegasus 36% faster on READs and 25% faster on WRITES.

I'll post the raw numbers tomorrow including results for the LaCie's "factory" pair of Hitachi Travelstar HDDs and a pair of Seagate Momentus Hybrid XT HDDs.
 
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What's the current state of knowledge about the LaCie

Hi, not enough time to read through all the threads here, I'd still like to know what the overall picture is as to whether the LaCie little big disk is worth its money? 1 TB or 2 TB? Is it true that the bottleneck is the controller? How much slower is it than what TB could deliver if implemented properly?
 
macbook123 said:
Hi, not enough time to read through all the threads here, I'd still like to know what the overall picture is as to whether the LaCie little big disk is worth its money? 1 TB or 2 TB? Is it true that the bottleneck is the controller? How much slower is it than what TB could deliver if implemented properly?
Click to expand...

Hi, not enough time to make to you a summary of the threads. Sorry :rolleyes:
 
macbook123 said:
I'm thinking of getting the 1 TB Lacie with the two 500 GB drives, and am hoping in a year or so they'll make 1 TB drives with 7200 rpm that i can use to replace the two 500 GB drives. Is this hope at all realistic?
Click to expand...

You'd be better off waiting for a decent JBOD enclosure that accepts a thunderbolt connection. Lacie hardware is not intended for heavy use. If you keep it on all the time, it's likely that it'll die within a year to a year and a half. If you only run it moderately, it can last much longer. Their components get way too hot and the fans are both noisy and ineffective. Icydock has done a better job in cooling sometimes but they've also had too many power supply issues. Basically all of these cheap flimsy enclosure + drive combinations suck.

spacepower7 said:
Every LaCie drive, cd, DVD, burners and hard drives that i have purchased have always had failed power supplies. I can't believe apple is working with them !! Please apple work with someone that is reliable.

All my LaCie stuff failed shortly after the warranty is up, so I had to pull drives and put them in cheap compusa enclosures which are still working.
Click to expand...

That's a really common complaint. Just take a look at reviews on lacie products on the Apple site.


luke99 said:
Yes, but LaCie also declares read trasfer rate of 480MB/s and write of 245MB/s.
You can easily obtain this throughput with 2 sata 3Gbps interfaces and 2 "not so new" SSDs. A new SINGLE Corsair Force GT SSD with sata 6Gbps reach 555MB/s read and 525MB/s write.
Moreover LaCie asks $900 for the 240GB model (2x120). That's too much for a software raid box.
I'm not so impressed for this product but for it's price...:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

New/low volume drives up the costs quite a bit, but I wouldn't buy it either. The appeal to this is a relatively fast drive that you can run off a macbook pro or air, but for performance products, I would want something with much better cooling than anything from lacie.

mac jones said:
The OP's benches are all over the internet now. Lacie is getting hammered :D

But this whole thing is silly. Nowhere, to my knowledge, do they say 'upgradable'.

It would be nice though.
Click to expand...

It would be a really expensive purchase just for that anyway. If thunderbolt gets some traction on the PC end, perhaps we'll see some better solutions next year.

lozion said:
Indeed.

Now, what the heck is OWC waiting for to release a single or dual TB enclosure to go with those fast SATA3 SSD's?
Click to expand...

No idea, but intel lagged in getting out any kind of sdk for thunderbolt. I wonder if they ever did get anything together.

luke99 said:
The Thunderbolt technology is currently in Apple's hands and strictly closed.
If you try to search "Thunderbolt" trademark using this link:
http://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/index.jsp
you will find that is registered by Apple with serial number 85314959
If you try to join the Intel Thunderbolt developers community using this link:
https://thunderbolttechnology.net/
you will receive the answer that you must wait until 2012.
I suspect that OWC and others must wait...
Click to expand...

That's not entirely true. They promised to release an SDK back in April. It kept getting pushed back. I don't know what happened in the end.

macbook123 said:
Hi, not enough time to read through all the threads here, I'd still like to know what the overall picture is as to whether the LaCie little big disk is worth its money? 1 TB or 2 TB? Is it true that the bottleneck is the controller? How much slower is it than what TB could deliver if implemented properly?
Click to expand...

Lacie sucks. The hardware is unreliable. It will not hold up for years of heavy use in spite of its price point.
 
macbook123 said:
One sentence summary would have been enough and cost you no more time than your nonsense response.
Click to expand...

I was sure that my answer would have been pointless for you :D
it isn't wasted time trying to educate... even without success...
 
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How would this compare

Hi everyone.
Been a long time follower of the forum and have learned a TON of stuff here, can not believe it took this long to jump in and join, perhaps it is that the questions I have are usually answered so well by reading the various posts.

The Thunderbolt Little Big Disk is an item I have followed ever since I first heard that it was being made. I bought the 1TB at the Apple store the day after it was made available. I have seen this thing do amazing things, like transfer 750 GBs from one Thunderbolt Little Big Disk to another one that was daisy chained to it in 2 hours and 10 minutes. Yet here is the question I have, I do alot of video editing on a late 2011 MacBookPro of which I output to the Thunderbolt Little Big Disk. Does anyone think that my output time would be just as fast or even faster if I was to put a 240GB OWC Mercury Extreme SSD at $359 in the OpiBay of my MacPookPro instead of this new SSD version of the 240GB Thunderbolt Little Big Disk at $899 ?
 
@MacBookProzak

I also do a lot of editing on a early 2011 MacBookPro.

I have pulled apart my LaCie Little Big Disk 1TB Thunderbolt and replaced the 500GB HDDs with OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSDs.

So far using Blackmagic-Design Disk Speed Test with 5GB Stress I have got the following Read / Write speeds :

Write = 355MB/s
Read = 462MB/s

I created a RAID 0 using Disk Utility.
 
alain.bach.nz said:
@MacBookProzak

I also do a lot of editing on a early 2011 MacBookPro.

I have pulled apart my LaCie Little Big Disk 1TB Thunderbolt and replaced the 500GB HDDs with OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSDs.

So far using Blackmagic-Design Disk Speed Test with 5GB Stress I have got the following Read / Write speeds :

Write = 355MB/s
Read = 462MB/s

I created a RAID 0 using Disk Utility.
Click to expand...



Wow, speed demon :D
 
Mac driver for Marvell 88SE91x

So I was hoping that LaCie had delayed the release of the SSD version of the TB LBD in order to provide a native Mac OS X driver for the Marvell 88SE9182 6Gbps SATA controller. Instead, they used 3Gbps Intel SSD 320's and avoided the issue altogether.

As I was wasting some time surfing about tonight, I happened to notice that NewerTech makes a MAXPower PCIe 2.0 eSATA 6Gbps 2-port RAID card based on a Marvell controller. The driver is freely downloadable, and the documentation indicates that the card uses a 88SE91x controller, although I was not able to determine the exact chip used. I just wonder if installing their driver might enable 6Gbps performance and RAID capabilities for the TB LBD under Mac OS X...

Here's the link if anyone cares to give it a whirl: http://www.newertech.com/downloads/newer_controller_mac_110705.dmg
 
repoman27 said:
So I was hoping that LaCie had delayed the release of the SSD version of the TB LBD in order to provide a native Mac OS X driver for the Marvell 88SE9182 6Gbps SATA controller. Instead, they used 3Gbps Intel SSD 320's and avoided the issue altogether.

As I was wasting some time surfing about tonight, I happened to notice that NewerTech makes a MAXPower PCIe 2.0 eSATA 6Gbps 2-port RAID card based on a Marvell controller. The driver is freely downloadable, and the documentation indicates that the card uses a 88SE91x controller, although I was not able to determine the exact chip used. I just wonder if installing their driver might enable 6Gbps performance and RAID capabilities for the TB LBD under Mac OS X...

Here's the link if anyone cares to give it a whirl: http://www.newertech.com/downloads/newer_controller_mac_110705.dmg
Click to expand...

Anyone try these drivers?

I've been playing around with various ways of enabling 6Gbps negotiated link speed. I recently did a firmware update to 2.15 and the 1.5/3.0 fix for the two 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs in the LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk. Nothing seems to work so far.
 
I'm going to give this a try tonight. I'm curious if anyone knows of a Windows 7 driver? Right now Windows 7 is using the default AHCI driver, but I'm not getting SATA III speeds. Real world file copy of 50+ gigs indicates roughly 200 MB/s average write speed for a single 240GB OCZ Vertex 3. The internal drives are 240GB Vertex 3 MAX IOPs and test show 550/514 read/write in Windows 7 Professional x64 with AHCI and Intel RST drivers. Unfortunately, I can't real world copy between internals as one is OSX (HSF+) and one is Windows (NTFS).
 
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I installed the newertech drivers and restarted OSX. The controller still shows up as unknown negotiated link speed of 3.0. I also successfully installed the Marvell SATA 6 controller drivers in Windows 7 x64. However, the performance was worse than the Microsoft Standard AHCI 1.0 drivers. Read remained at 248MB/s and writes fell to 187MB/s measured on ATTO with OCZ Vertex 3. The similar internal drives hit 550/514 with the Intel RST drivers. An important note is the Marvell drivers do not appear in IDE/ATAPI controllers, but listed separately under Storage Controllers. They are likely not AHCI and running through SCSI channel instead. This could potentially be installed without the AHCI hack, which would be good for those who want to maintain Sleep (S3).
 
shortcut3d said:
I installed the newertech drivers and restarted OSX. The controller still shows up as unknown negotiated link speed of 3.0. I also successfully installed the Marvell SATA 6 controller drivers in Windows 7 x64. However, the performance was worse than the Microsoft Standard AHCI 1.0 drivers. Read remained at 248MB/s and writes fell to 187MB/s measured on ATTO with OCZ Vertex 3. The similar internal drives hit 550/514 with the Intel RST drivers. An important note is the Marvell drivers do not appear in IDE/ATAPI controllers, but listed separately under Storage Controllers. They are likely not AHCI and running through SCSI channel instead. This could potentially be installed without the AHCI hack, which would be good for those who want to maintain Sleep (S3).
Click to expand...

Thanks for trying this and reporting back. Bummer about the NewerTech drivers, but that was a bit of a long shot anyway.

What were you using for Marvell drivers for Windows 7 64-bit? As a point of reference, the Marvell 88SE9182 is also used on the Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z, benchmarked here: http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/asus_maximus_iv_extreme_z,11.html
The link to the Marvell drivers that Asus provides is here: http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/sata/Marvell_V1001051_V10014_XPVistaWin7.zip

Also, were you able to access the RAID features of the 88SE9182 in Windows with the Marvell drivers?
 
Is it possible to connect one single SATA 6 Gbps SSD-drive to the motherboard of the LBD (without using the daughter-card) to reach higher speeds?

Or is there any other option to get 6 Gbps with the LBD?

Is the hardware the problem or the software/driver?
 
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