LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD review

Thunderbolt’s the latest kid at the connection block, but its greased-lightning transfer rates make for a very attractive alternative to USB and FireWire for many who move big chunks of information at the regular. Despite its many advantages, it’s still in its infancy, so there are few peripherals supporting the 10Gbps interface. LaCie’s Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD is one of the first to utilize Apple and Intel’s new data superhighway, and it pairs a few 2.5-inch, 120GB Intel 320 series SSDs in RAID 0 configuration to take full good thing about all that bandwidth. But, such speed comes at a hefty cost: $899.95 when it goes on sale later this month. Is it as quick as they are saying? Is it definitely worth the money? There’s only 1 method to discover, so let’s have a look at how the newest Little Big Disk handles itself, we could?

First Impression and Setup

Like lots of LaCie’s other external storage devices, the recent Little Big Disk (LBD) has a ribbed aluminum shell and a glowing blue orb at the front that serves as both an influence button and drive activity indicator. There is a matching aluminum stand that slides onto the ground, and around back you will find a duo of Thunderbolt ports, the facility plug, and a Kensington lock. Together with the drive itself, you get an influence brick, a utilities disc with Intego Backup Manager Pro software onboard and never much else. Unfortunately, you will need to purchase the mandatory Thunderbolt cable separately, but no less than it comes with a smattering of plug adapters so world travelers can use the LBD wherever they go.

Hooking the drive up is a snap. Simply plug within the power cable, connect it as much as the Thunderbolt port in your MacBook Pro and let the information flow. We also connected a monitor with a DisplayPort adapter to the LBD, and the video passthrough functionality worked flawlessly from the jump. The drive has quite a small footprint, because it measures just 1.6 inches wide, 5.5 deep and three.3 inches tall, so odds are theres’s room for it on even the foremost cluttered desks. Though you could not be so keen to have it there, because the fan keeping those dual SSDs cool does make a good little bit of noise. Not as loud as a laptop when the fan kicks on at full bore, but it is a noticeable sound that does not stop while the drive is powered on.

Speed Tests

We put the Little Big Disk in the course of the ringer using our MacBook Pro running OS X 10.6.8, a 2.3 GHz Core i7, and 8GB of RAM. We were told to expect read speeds of 480 MB/sec and write speeds of 254 MB/sec, and we got near those numbers in our testing — we often saw 250 MB/sec writes and 470 MB/sec reads using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. Those speeds translated to a 200MB file being transferred in 2.5 seconds, a 1GB file in 12 seconds, a 5GB file in 57 seconds, and a 10GB file took just below two minutes to move from laptop to LBD. We also backed up 89GB worth of information using using Time Machine in 23 minutes and 22 seconds, and created a bootable backup using the included Intego software in 38 minutes and 5 seconds at a standard speed of 41.8 MB/sec. Remember that, the Little Big Disk takes our usual external storage device — a 0 Western Digital My Book 0 using USB 2.0 — to the woodshed in relation to writing and recording bits and bytes.

As the drive comes pre-formatted as a RAID 0 setup, we planned to run similar tests in RAID 1, because the drive supports it and never everyone seems to be comfortable keeping their most sacred files in a RAID 0 array. Unfortunately, we bumped into some troubles after running a 7-Pass erase at the drive using the Mac OSX Disk Utility and were unable to reformat the LBD right into a RAID 1 configuration. We’ve been involved with LaCie concerning the issue, and may update this review with the brand new numbers once we’re in a position to get things squared away.

Backup Tool

The included backup software from Intego is a versatile tool that’s easy to exploit. Once you’ve installed the software from the included CD, customizing it to fit your needs is a painless process. There is a standard tool that will select individual files and folders, and you’ll schedule backups, create rules and exceptions to deal with files how you want. You can also set your system to sleep or unmount the drive once it’s finished safeguarding your data. For sure, the software also allows you to create a bootable backup of your system and install synchronization of folders to boot. It is a comprehensive suite, and one shall we see ourselves using regularly.

Wrap up

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All in all, the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD performs as advertised. You get crazy fast transfer rates due to the Thunderbolt interface and dual SSDs in RAID 0 configuration. LaCie’s marketing the drive at people that create audio and video content (there is a ‘Professional SSD’ label at the box, in spite of everything). And, we figure there’ll be a number of those folks who’ll gladly pay the $900 entry fee to maneuver massive chunks of knowledge at breakneck pace. When you aren’t? Well, as drool-inducing as those speeds could be, we just can’t see many clients spending quite a bit on a tool they’ll use as a repository for backup files. But, if you’ve gotten cash to burn and a necessity for speed, the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD could be just what the doctor ordered.

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This post is tagged: aluminum shell, backup manager, external storage devices, first impression, kensington lock, world travelers