Lacie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series 2TB, capacity and speed in movement – Review

With Mac laptops more and more compact and powerful, the ability to carry around your work starts to tease even professionals. A recent MacBook Pro, Retina or not, has achieved performance that, until a few years ago, necessarily requiring a Mac Pro is very good results, but if you work in the field of the image or video, then the internal disks, species SSDs offer capacities too small given the amount of data that must be handled.

The Firewire connections and the latest USB 3.0, offer a good compromise for storing static or hobby activities / semi-pro, but to achieve the performance of the integrated disks, you must necessarily have recourse to the Thunderbolt port. Compatible devices grow week after week, and one that we liked from the beginning to its form factor are the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series of LaCie.

The unit contains two drives set in RAID 0 (lineage) of the series, in order to obtain a single partition and increase the speed, but you can also opt for a RAID 1 (mirror) focusing on security. The access and configuration are performed directly from the Disk Utility and if desired, it is not necessary to use any of the applications that come bundled. It is available in denominations of 1TB (2 x 500GB) @ 7200rpm 1TB, 2TB (2 x 1TB) and 240GB SSD (120GB x 2). The latter configuration is very fast but also expensive and not very large so that, on balance, it seems really interesting …

One of the positive aspects of the Thunderbolt units that interact directly with the system bus and using the cascade connection, you can join several hard configuring them as a single RAID volume. Even with the mechanical HDD so you can achieve world-class performance: LaCie speaks of a read speed of 670MB/s cascaded 4 with 1TB drives. The version we tested these days is to 2TB, the most capacious but equipped with 5400rpm disks.

Given its size, very compact, the Little Big Disk is distinctly voted for mobility: just put it in your bag along with a MacBook Pro, and you get a portable studio. As a solution desk is definitely the most beneficial Lacie 2 big Thunderbolt which, at the same price, offers more performance and capacity thanks to the 3.5″ disks at 7200rpm, but the weight and bulk are certainly not suitable for transport. The negative aspect of the LaCie little big disk that is to run the two units require a dedicated power supply, making it impossible to use without a power outlet.

The two Thunderbolt ports on the back allow you to connect other devices in cascade, and given the compatibility with standard mini-DisplayPort, can be used regularly to monitor both the previous Cinema Display that any other model using appropriate adapters. To consider that, as most of the Thunderbolt units on the market, does not offer other types of connections, making it impossible to access data from any computer that does not have one. The peak velocity measured is about 170MB/s write and 175MB/s read, not too much slower than that of unity 1TB at 7200rpm previously reviewed in which he scored 190MB/s and 200MB/s.

In recent days, we have tried using applications like Aperture and Final Cut by moving the massive data libraries on the Little Big Disk, and the results have been very positive. The overall performance is more than double than the fastest 2.5″ drives Firewire 800 usually used by professionals on the move. To equate his speed need a good internal hard drive 3.5 ” @ 7200rpm, such as the Barracuda that I installed in my iMac 21.5″ which marks substantially similar results.

Conclusions

The design of the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt you cannot only express positive words, a constant for the LaCie products. Equally valid is the construction, robust aluminum assembled with impeccable precision, with a total weight of approximately 750 grams, including the supporting base (which can be removed to further reduce the size). The great ” blue eye ” on the front indicates disk activity, but it is also a button to turn on and turn off the unit.

In spite of the houses, indestructible structure fails to sufficiently mitigate the noise and the fan disk, and in quiet environments, it can be all too audible. This is probably the aspect that has not convinced us, together with the necessary power that makes the disc maintain the presence of the electric current going to cancel part of the benefits of mobility than the cheaper (and faster) desktop solutions.

Costs

The price of the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 TB is $349. Thunderbolt drives are definitely expensive and intended for a small circle of professionals for whom an average speed of 100MB/s more than the unit Firewire / USB 3.0 really makes a difference.