LaCie starts shipping Thunderbolt-equipped Little Big Disk

Jos

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LaCie has announced today that its first Thunderbolt device, the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt external drive, is now available for purchase. The drive was announced all the way back in February for a summer launch, and now it is finally arriving at Apple Stores -- though only the HDD variant. Its dual-disk design that can be configured in either RAID 0 or RAID 1, and comes in two configurations: 1TB with 7200rpm speeds, or 2TB with 5400rpm disk speeds.

In terms of performance, the new drive boasts read speeds of up to 190 MB/s, but according to LaCie users can daisy chain several Little Big Disks to maximize Thunderbolt's capabilities and reach transfer rates of 800 MB/s. The company will be releasing an SSD version of the drive in October that increases read speeds to over 480 MB/s.

Its rugged aluminum protective casing measures just 1.6 x 5.5 x 3.3 inches and weighs about 1.4 pounds. The drive is compact and light enough to carry in a backpack, but it's not exactly portable, as you'll need to a separate AC adapter to power it. The drive comes with a tiny fan in the back that emits almost no noise during operation.

Priced at $400 for the 1TB version and $500 for the 2TB model, the new Little Big Disk is not exactly cheap. Then again, your only other Thunderbolt-equipped storage option is the 4TB, $1,000 Promise Pegasus that debuted in June.

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I guess if you want/need that type of speed it might be worth it, though you can buy a 2 TB external drive ($90) and a USB 3 card ($20). So for about 1/4 the price you can get double the size at 1/2 the speed. In most cases this would be good enough.
 
... " the new drive boasts READ speeds of UP TO 190 MB/s " ...

Come on! Give me a break!

That's too slow (less of 20%) for a 10 Gb/s bus, even for USB 3.0
 
If you run Windows on your Mac, will it recognize Thunderbolt connected external drives?

Cause I read that if you have a Thunderbolt display, you can't run Windows on your Mac at all.
 
For the 1GB/s that Thunderbolt can archive, this is a duck slap in the face! get a Sata 3 and use the 700MB/S that it can do!
 
gwailo247 said:
If you run Windows on your Mac, will it recognize Thunderbolt connected external drives?

Cause I read that if you have a Thunderbolt display, you can't run Windows on your Mac at all.

Dude -- you KILL me!!! My goodness... do you really sit around THINKING about stuff like this?

:)
 
sammyjames said:
gwailo247 said:
If you run Windows on your Mac, will it recognize Thunderbolt connected external drives?

Cause I read that if you have a Thunderbolt display, you can't run Windows on your Mac at all.

Dude -- you KILL me!!! My goodness... do you really sit around THINKING about stuff like this?

:)

Yes, I've found that the ability to think has helped me a lot in life. You should try it some time.
 
unless its a multidrive raid or solid state thunderbolt is a bit pointless. Standard drives just aren't fast enough.
 
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