The lacie little big disk arrived today test results

[philipma1957]

first off it runs loud.

second it is fast. at least when i pulled the stock 500gb hdds out and put in a pair of samsung 256gb series 470 ssd's run in raid0.

actually those scores are pretty good and I am sure a pro could use that speed and large storage size in a small space.

doing this mod kills the warranty, but buying a seller refurbished unit on ebay would allow a square trade warranty. this build is far faster then lacies 240gb ssd unit.

I would give a link to a famous auction site but I have not put it up for sale on ebay I may sell it and if I did it could be covered by square trade warranty.

(as seller refurbished)

very annoying that you can't diy one and keep it under warranty

( lacie voids the warranty if you open the unit) but you can sell a diy one and give a square trade warranty to the buyer.


here is a link to the 240gb ssd review cost 899 plus tax.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5066/lacie-little-big-disk-240gb-ssd-review


this 512gb unit can be built for about 1k only 100 more then the slower smaller lacie 240gb ssd above.


I tested this with a pair of kingston 64gb ssds these pull more juice

I tested this with a pair of samsung 830 ssd's 64gb size. these used 5 watts at a low load and 8 watts when they overwrite zeros

same as the 470 series 256gb ssds tested above.

Others have written that 500 to 550 seems to be the max speed for one unit.

they have a bridge and I think they would max at 520MB/s. this means good sata II ssds will work fine inside of them.

I also found you can pull one hdd out of it and put in one ssd. they use your machines raid setup you can do raid 1 raid 0 or jbod.

It is a nice piece of gear if you mod it with the samsungs. 8 watts is low power use. and that is with a zero over write 5 to 6 watts is normal. I was lazy and did not try to use a fw800 to dc jack other then the one that works with owc's unit here.


http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEPMPWR12VF8/

this does not fit and I only had the one from lace's power supply I was not looking to cut it. I will play with it tomorrow as I am sure you can get that to work as long as you don't daisy chain .

 

[theSeb]

How loud is loud? Mac Mini fans at 6000+ RPM loud or louder?

 

[elpmas]

Nice

 

[japtor]

Any clue if it's Windows bootable? I'm guessing no cause the TB drivers probably don't load early enough, on the other hand it might work if it just sees it as PCIe and SATA (if that itself is even bootable in a normal config).

 

[philipma1957]

How loud is loud? Mac Mini fans at 6000+ RPM loud or louder?

More like mac mini fans at 3500. I will sound meter it later today. The key is using the samsung ssds as they pull very little juice. The surface of this is much cooler then with the pair of oem 500gb hdds.

Any clue if it's Windows bootable? I'm guessing no cause the TB drivers probably don't load early enough, on the other hand it might work if it just sees it as PCIe and SATA (if that itself is even bootable in a normal config).

thunderbolt does not work with windows.


UPDATE IT SHOULD BOOT WITH WINDOWS!!! Windows 7 or 8 should work as of aug 2012

 

[theSeb]

Thanks. Appreciate your threads.

 

[philipma1957]

To theSeb you are welcome. I have results for it using a pair of samsung 830 64gb ssds the first thumbnail

the second thumbnail shows a pair of 64gb kingston ssds they were pretty fast to read and okay to write. they pulled far more power 8 watts at idle and 11 watts for a zero over write

last shot is the oem hdds they were hitachi 500gb 7200 rpm they were Advanced Format and i suspect they were setup wrong by lacie. the scores are poor 189 read and 119 write. I am of the opinion that they need to be aligned based on the scores they give me. I even wonder if they don't belong in this machine and due to the hdd shortage were pressed into duty. I mention this because anandtech gets much better results for write on his hdd model 200 not 120.


I have to put a sound meter to them. I also wonder if I detach the fan if the samsung 470 series would stay cool enough.

If that is true it would be a silent piece of gear.


I also have a thermaltake usb fan and a few laptop coolers.

I will play around some more with this. there also appears to be a booting issue.

If you clone the internal hdd to it the boot hangs. there is an option to efi boot.

I also think you could leave 1 hdd in this and put in one ssd. run it as jbod this would be helpful for iMac users. buy an

iMac like this

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC814LL/A

buy a lacie like this


http://store.apple.com/us/product/H7150ZM/A/lacie-little-big-disk-thunderbolt-series-hard-drive


pop in an ssd leave in the one hdd run as jbod

 

[g4cube]

... It is a nice piece of gear if you mod it with the samsungs. 8 watts is low power use. and that is with a zero over write 5 to 6 watts is normal. I was lazy and did not try to use a fw800 to dc jack other then the one that works with owc's unit here.


http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEPMPWR12VF8/

this does not fit and I only had the one from lace's power supply I was not looking to cut it. I will play with it tomorrow as I am sure you can get that to work as long as you don't daisy chain .

When considering other power sources, remember that the LBD requires +12v.

FW800 power can be anything from +8 to +30v; would hate for you to toast your LBD.

I'm sure you don't need a door stop.

When I contacted OWC, I was told by support that there is no regulator in their cable, and it was only spec'ed to be used with certain OWC products. I don't think they will help you if you fry your LBD.

 

[ejosepha]

To theSeb you are welcome. I have results for it using a pair of samsung 830 64gb ssds the first thumbnail

the second thumbnail shows a pair of 64gb kingston ssds they were pretty fast to read and okay to write. they pulled far more power 8 watts at idle and 11 watts for a zero over write

last shot is the oem hdds they were hitachi 500gb 7200 rpm they were Advanced Format and i suspect they were setup wrong by lacie. the scores are poor 189 read and 119 write. I am of the opinion that they need to be aligned based on the scores they give me. I even wonder if they don't belong in this machine and due to the hdd shortage were pressed into duty. I mention this because anandtech gets much better results for write on his hdd model 200 not 120.


I have to put a sound meter to them. I also wonder if I detach the fan if the samsung 470 series would stay cool enough.

If that is true it would be a silent piece of gear.


I also have a thermaltake usb fan and a few laptop coolers.

I will play around some more with this. there also appears to be a booting issue.

If you clone the internal hdd to it the boot hangs. there is an option to efi boot.

I also think you could leave 1 hdd in this and put in one ssd. run it as jbod this would be helpful for iMac users. buy an

iMac like this

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC814LL/A

buy a lacie like this


http://store.apple.com/us/product/H7150ZM/A/lacie-little-big-disk-thunderbolt-series-hard-drive


pop in an ssd leave in the one hdd run as jbod

Hello Again,
I am interested in purchasing this thunderbolt disk, but I would need to be sure that my 30" ACD will perform as well when daisy chained to the port on the back of the Lacie Thunderbolt disk with the mini display adaptor as it does now attached directly to the Mac Mini.
Firstly will it work, and secondly is there a diminution of performance daisy chained or will it run as if attached to the Mini.
Also, is there a heat issue when transferring large files from the mini to a thunderbolt HD or is it relatively easy on the Mac Mini (I7 dual core).
Thanks

 

[MJL]

@ philipma1957

macsales has the newertech guardian maximus mini for under 100 USD. That will take two 2.5" drives and conenction is FW800 / eSata / USB 2. No fan, noisy with ordinary HDD but I suspect pretty decent with SSD.

There are some big differences in SSD; power usage is one area but the other item is that some SSD are actually internally RAID configured.

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

 

[philipma1957]

@ philipma1957

macsales has the newertech guardian maximus mini for under 100 USD. That will take two 2.5" drives and conenction is FW800 / eSata / USB 2. No fan, noisy with ordinary HDD but I suspect pretty decent with SSD.

There are some big differences in SSD; power usage is one area but the other item is that some SSD are actually internally RAID configured.

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

I have owned the guardian maximus mini

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax_Portable

not allowed to open them voids warranty


*************************************************************************************************
I own four of these

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/EliteALmini/RAID/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

I use them in fw800 raid0

for superduper clone rock solid truly rock solid they run on the fw800 cable so a 1 wire solution

***********************************************************************************************
and i have this unit clone of the guardian maximus mini


http://www.ebay.com/itm/AKiTio-Taur...e_Internal&hash=item2a145fb547#ht_5589wt_1398


all are good pieces of gear for pc's or macs.

*********************************************************************************************************
but none of them will go faster then 200 read 200 write. this is the limit of the chip bridge. so they are less then half the speed of the lacie

*******************************************************************************************************



I did a boat load of testing the seller on ebay sells a clone of the owc guardian maximus mini but lets you load it. the flaw of this gear is you need esata... and speed stops around 200mb/s


BTW this is the reason why apple change the mini's design


https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1178755/


if this style of mini had the good cpu with Sata III connections apple would not be able to sell thunderbolt. this unit ran 4 tb at speeds of 180 read 180 write. could dual boot snow lion and was great other then the slow motion c2d 2.66 too bad they made the new design. how would you like that unit with a quad 2.0 in it one set of 2tb in a raid0 and keep the bottom drive as a Sata III samsung 830 ssd they could even give you a discrete gpu because of the brick being the psu. Apple has plans for the thunderbolt concept so this chance has been lost.

 

[philipma1957]

Hello Again,
I am interested in purchasing this thunderbolt disk, but I would need to be sure that my 30" ACD will perform as well when daisy chained to the port on the back of the Lacie Thunderbolt disk with the mini display adaptor as it does now attached directly to the Mac Mini.
Firstly will it work, and secondly is there a diminution of performance daisy chained or will it run as if attached to the Mini.
Also, is there a heat issue when transferring large files from the mini to a thunderbolt HD or is it relatively easy on the Mac Mini (I7 dual core).
Thanks

I can't answer as I do not have a display to test it with. I can tell you this I super duper cloned a 65 gb osx to it and it only pulled 6 watts to the lacie unit. but that was with samsung ssd's inside of it. I believe that if you clone your mini's internal to it once a week you will be fine for over heating your mini will not suffer as it is reading its internal and the lacie would be fine.

Seems to me this is a good piece of gear if you void the warranty and drop in samsung 470 series ssds or samsung series 830 ssds.

Now for an acid test I just pulled the fan out so it is dead silent. It pulls 4 watts on idle and is not warm. this is with a pair of samsung series 470 256gb ssds inside in a raid0. I am going to clone the internal to it and see what it pulls watt wise.

well I wrote zeros over it 270gb out of 512gb so far it is not hot just warm. I am very pleased with results so far.

In fact I purchased a second unit and ordered a samsung 830 512gb ssd's this will give me a 1.1tb ssd for about 1.1k.

I have a used intel 600gb ssd on hand.

this unit allows mixed drives.

while expensive if I can run it with no fan a big plus and if i can use the fw800 bus to power it win win.

I am going to put a 12v reg in the fw800 cable.



I will post a few photos later.

1st photo shows the small fan pulled

2nd photo shows the power deep into a zero over write

screen shot shows the overwrite


now mind you pulling the fan voids warranty.

putting in ssds voids the warranty.



IF YOU DO THIS DON'T DAISY CHAIN ANYTHING!!!


I AM going to test booting and a few other things but dead quiet 450 read 375 write is ***** great.

Oh and with the fan pulled and a pair of samsung series 470 ssds 256gb total 512gb idle is 4 watts!!!


I got it to boot!

so it is dead quiet

it boots it is 512gb

it pulls 4 to 7 watts.

i built this for just under 1k

a pair of 256gb samsung series 470 on ebay for about 600 and a discounted 1tb little big disk for about 370 = 970 total.


add in a t bolt cable for 45 grand total was 1015 but I have a pair of 500gb hdds may get 150 for them on ebay.


so lets say 865 for this unit.


Don't know about a daisy chain

don't know about monitors .


fast quiet will get back on stable.

 

[g4cube]

RE: 30" Apple Color Display (ACD)

I don't know about the ACD, but I don't have any problem with my 15" Macbook Pro + LBD 2TB + 24" Dell monitor.

Apple Thunderbolt Cable between MB Pro, and generic mDP to DVI-D cable between LBD and the Dell monitor.

Also tried with my Samsung 65" DLP TV. Using Monoprice or Griffin mDP to HDMI adaptor, then HDMI cable to TV. Works fine with the LBD in daisy-chain in the middle. Monoprice and Griffin HDMI adapters both pass thru audio to the TV.

In the several LaCie/Apple demos I've seen, LaCie has daisy chained several drives, and then had a LaCie LCD display at the end of the chain. Since LaCie monitors don't have a mDP connection, an adapter cable was used.

So I imagine it should work fine with your ACD. To be sure, call Apple Care and ask.

 

[shortcut3d]

@philipma

Can you compare the performance of the LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk to using a 2011 Mac Mini in target disk mode?

I have a spare 2011 Mac Mini 2.7 GHz i7 as a result of setup change errr overhaul of my HTPC setup. It's configured with the same specs of the Server model in my signature. Obviously, I can't return it and would have to eBay it. After my latest eBay nightmare selling iPhone 4's, and stock parts from the Macs I mod; I am not looking forward to trying. (OT: the buyer held me hostage threatening complaints, fraud, negative feedback if I didn't give him a 20% discount. He did this after he received positive feedback. Should have known better when someone did buy it now for all my listings.)

 

[philipma1957]

@philipma

Can you compare the performance of the LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk to using a 2011 Mac Mini in target disk mode?

I have a spare 2011 Mac Mini 2.7 GHz i7 as a result of setup change errr overhaul of my HTPC setup. It's configured with the same specs of the Server model in my signature. Obviously, I can't return it and would have to eBay it. After my latest eBay nightmare selling iPhone 4's, and stock parts from the Macs I mod; I am not looking forward to trying. (OT: the buyer held me hostage threatening complaints, fraud, negative feedback if I didn't give him a 20% discount. He did this after he received positive feedback. Should have known better when someone did buy it now for all my listings.)

Maybe send me a pm and we can figure out how to test. I have 2 2011 servers for personal use right now so we may be able to figure a way out on how to test.

 

[shortcut3d]

Maybe send me a pm and we can figure out how to test. I have 2 2011 servers for personal use right now so we may be able to figure a way out on how to test.

You have a PM.

 

[philipma1957]

Just got back read the pm and I am thinking of a few tests.

 

[philipma1957]

okay second machine came today .

the second one can boot through the first. right now I have one with 2 64gb samsung series 830 ssds and one with 2 256gb samsung series 470 ssds. I will do some more tests. I have found this much out the 512gb raid0 is stable and runs with no fan since the 22nd of nov. as a precaution I set up a laptop cooler underneath but it is not needed.

 

[shortcut3d]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I ordered a 1TB LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk and will replace the drives with at least one (1) Sandforce 2200 series SSD. There was some dispute on Anandtech whether the LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk has one or two SATA III channels. If its one channel I'll use a single Sanforce 2200 series SSD. I have a lot of maintenance in order to swap in a matched pair of SSDs. If there are not two channels then it would not be worth it. However, there is potential to saturate Thunderbolt with over 10Gbps.

 

[shortcut3d]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Would I be able to mix a regular OCZ Vertex 3 and an OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPs of the same size in RAID 0.

 

[philipma1957]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Would I be able to mix a regular OCZ Vertex 3 and an OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPs of the same size in RAID 0.

these are osx software raids so I am pretty sure yes. I am also pretty sure max speed is 550MB/s I will test more.

 

[shortcut3d]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Is the 550MB/s limit because Apple doesn't have drivers for the controller or is it simply one channel?

 

[philipma1957]

I know the achi from intel is 550MB/s on mac pros if you do osx software raid. most often you get to 470-480 MB/s

the limit on the mini may be better since mac pros are Sata II and Minis are Sata III.

So far with osx raid I maxxed at 480MB/s

there is also some software that comes with it but it is not raid software.

on the good end the raid osx lets you do JBOD raid0 and raid1 even 1 hdd and one ssd. but I am thinking this unit will max out at roughly 500MB/s with the current osx. I have to do more tests with the 2 units. I have 4 identical kingston ssds so I can do a 4 ssd raid0 and see what i get.

If I get past the 500 MB/s mark then the limit is in the bridge inside the lacie unit. It will take an hour or two to set it up maybe tomorrow.

 

[Ice Dragon]

480 is nice. Perhaps if the cost goes down on one, I'll eventually get one.

 

[philipma1957]

480 is nice. Perhaps if the cost goes down on one, I'll eventually get one.

I am selling the stock oem hdds inside for about 150 for the pair on ebay. so the 400 price usa minus 150 is 250.

while a high price for a 2 bay empty unit with no warranty.

(pulling the hdds voids the warranty)

it is the fastest 2 bay unit in the world and so far seems very stable with the samsung ssd's and it boots!


in no order the units below are great;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111112


http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEQMH0GBK/


http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax_Portable


http://www.ebay.com/itm/AKiTio-Taur...e_Internal&hash=item1c217e2759#ht_5623wt_1343