LaCie's new external drive line-up is equipped with 5TB Seagate drives

[Shawn Knight]

LaCie on Thursday became the first company to ship a 5TB, 7,200 RPM external hard drive. The drives are available in an array of external storage enclosures including the 5big Thunderbolt Series, the 2big Thunderbolt Series and the d2 Thunderbolt Series as outlined in a press release on the matter.

The new external storage products range in size from 5TB single drive systems to 25TB RAID solutions and as the series names suggest, they connect to PCs and Macs via a speedy Thunderbolt connection.

The enclosures in question use new Seagate hard drives featuring Shingled Magnetic Recording technology which came about because they were simply unable to shrink the head and tracks on the platters any more but still wanted to increase storage capacity. The tech allowed Seagate to increase 3.5-inch platter density from 1TB to 1.25TB which made these 4-platter, 5TB drives a reality.

The 25TB enclosure is one of the highest-capacity setups available with just five drives but as you might have guessed, it comes with a pretty hefty price tag attached - $2,499. That’s a lot to ask for the average media buff but the space savings alone could be enough to get the attention of video editors and photography professionals.

If that’s a bit too much coin to spare, the d2 with 5TB of storage will only set you back $449 (or $299 for the 3TB model).

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https://www.techspot.com/news/55755-lacies-new-external-drive-line-up-is-equipped-with-5tb-seagate-drives.html

 

[VitalyT]

The funny thing, everybody complains about LaCie's products - the annoying blue light that's so bright and irritating, people try plugging it with everything they can, from plaster to a chewing gum.

The blue cyclops may look cool on the picture, but it is hell annoying in person, especially in dark environment.

Anyways, it is easier to understand, if you look at their initial prototype...

 

[GhostRyder]

I have an alternative solution to this: Buy the Asrock Z87 Extreme11 board that have an over abundance of Sata Ports, buy 12 or more 2tb Drives, and setup some extreme Raid setup on it. That will probably cost significantly less than just this device.

 

[Guest]

Add to that the worst hard drives in the industry. Why would anybody want this?

 

[Rig]

SMR is not so cool. Probably have to wait for helium drives before capacity really increases beyond 4TB.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I have an alternative solution to this: Buy the Asrock Z87 Extreme11 board that have an over abundance of Sata Ports, buy 12 or more 2tb Drives, and setup some extreme Raid setup on it. That will probably cost significantly less than just this device.

Yeah and if you chuck all those drives into a case like Corsair's Obsidian 900D you'd still come away with some change.

 

[Enthusiast]

I have an alternative solution to this: Buy the Asrock Z87 Extreme11 board that have an over abundance of Sata Ports, buy 12 or more 2tb Drives, and setup some extreme Raid setup on it. That will probably cost significantly less than just this device.

Yeah and if you chuck all those drives into a case like Corsair's Obsidian 900D you'd still come away with some change.

My response does not imply I think $2.5k is a good deal for this NAS box, but... isn't there a large operating cost difference between a home built RAID system based on a full x86 machine vs a purpose built NAS box? With 24/7 usage, how long before the power sipping NAS Box starts to become a cheaper than than your expensive Corsair case with old CPU, pricey mobo, like 12 drives and whatever PSU you need to run that monstrosity? Also, while I understand the appeal of FreeNAS and other freeware, isn't there something to be said for company supported OSs that are kept current? There is a middleground somewhere right? I voted with my wallet and bought a Synology 4 bay (DS412 I think) - works well, and happy with what I paid for what I get (including the simple Synology apps for iOS that the non-IT-savvy family use, and the free surveillance package so as to use it as an NVR with my web cameras).

 

[GhostRyder]

My response does not imply I think $2.5k is a good deal for this NAS box, but... isn't there a large operating cost difference between a home built RAID system based on a full x86 machine vs a purpose built NAS box? With 24/7 usage, how long before the power sipping NAS Box starts to become a cheaper than than your expensive Corsair case with old CPU, pricey mobo, like 12 drives and whatever PSU you need to run that monstrosity? Also, while I understand the appeal of FreeNAS and other freeware, isn't there something to be said for company supported OSs that are kept current? There is a middleground somewhere right? I voted with my wallet and bought a Synology 4 bay (DS412 I think) - works well, and happy with what I paid for what I get (including the simple Synology apps for iOS that the non-IT-savvy family use, and the free surveillance package so as to use it as an NVR with my web cameras).

\

Well if the Haswell i7 is considered dated then wow I must have missed something lol.

There is a use for this no doubt, however there is one major issue with having such huge Drives inside something like this which comes down to the idea of failed drives. The bigger the drive is in the array, the higher the chance that the system will lose data. Now of course your raid array will rebuild itself (Depending on if enough drives are still active and how you have it setup), but having tons of smaller drives while that does up the chance of getting a bad one but it also gives more opportunity for the system to save data and prevent a chance of loss. In a server environment, that is the primary reason I see most of the servers Ido with tons of small drives instead of 1 or 2 big drives with the same capacity of a group of the small drives because the chance of loss of data is lower.

Have 5, 5tb HDDS in one NAS at this price is a bit risky in this type of scenario because those drives each have the same chance of failure and the people buying a storage device in this range obviously are going to use alot of space. If one of those drives went out and you have 20+ Terabytes of data the chance of loss goes up. But then again in this day and age most devices are less prone to loss so its really just a game of chance and whether or not you want to take the expensive risk.

 

[Enthusiast]

Well if the Haswell i7 is considered dated then wow I must have missed something lol.

Hahaha! Haswell is definitely not outdated, and I believe they are more power efficient than older chips...sorry, I'm still an amateur in that I didn't match the socket from the board you mentioned with a particular chip... But still...the power for 12 drives and a big MoBo vs an ASC chip, a purpose built board and four NAS specific enterprise drives - it adds up eventually, right?

I do agree that proprietary RAID setups are troubling, as you need another platform if the platform fails, vs the drive, but I'd not yet heard that larger drives are more likely to result in file loss than a lot of smaller drives... And I'm actually concerned that freeware RAID controllers are not as reliable as company ones... I'm not a RAID expert by any means however...would appreciate another's thoughts.

 

[turismozilla]

What about that article a few weeks ago saying Seagate is just not the way to go? I recall Toshiba (maybe Hitachi) ranked highest, then WD did all right, and Seagate sucked badly.