Posted in Storage , Thunderbolt , LaCie , 2big , Mac
LaCie showcased their 2big Thunderbolt drive at CES 2012 and it has now started shipping.
Specifications of LaCie 2big Thunderbolt SeriesCapacities4TB and 6TB (and 8TB)Revolutions per minute (rpm)7200rpmMaximum Read Speed327MB/sMaximum Write Speed320MB/sConnectivity2x ThunderboltDimensions (WxHxD)3.5" x 6.7" x 7.8" (9.1 x 17.2 x 20.0 cm)Price$649 (4TB) and $799 (6TB)The LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series is essentially the LaCie Little Big Disk in 3.5" form factor. It has two swappable 3.5" drives whereas the Little Big Disk has two 2.5" drives. 3.5" drives offer larger capacities and better performance, particularly with hard drive. The 2big is rated at transfer speeds up to 327MB/s while the Little Big Disk tops out at 190MB/s (both results are for the non-SSD versions). LaCie has an 8TB model on their site as well but there is no price listed, which suggests that it's not shipping yet.
There are also two Thunderbolt ports for daisy-chaining, so you can daisy-chain several 2bigs or other Thunderbolt devices. The 2big most likely uses the same SATA controller as the Little Big Disk, which means you are limited to two SATA 3Gb/s ports. For the standard configuration this isn't an issue, but people who are interested in swapping the hard drives for SSDs should be aware that the SATA controller will be a potential bottleneck with the fastest SATA 6Gb/s SSDs.
Source: LaCie
solipsism Reply RE: Testing & Comparing? by zorxd on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 There is no speed gain over eSATA since these drives all are SATA internally, so there is no way that these drives can be faster than a native SATA 300 port.And there is probably no speed gain over USB3 either since the largest number out there (327MB/s) is only about half of USB3's speed. The performance of controllers, however, could go on either side.
In the end, this is the maximum burst read speed. Average sustained speed is probably more like 150MB/s or so.
zorxd Reply RE: Testing & Comparing? by MySchizoBuddy on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 where did eSATA come in? 
MySchizoBuddy Reply RE: Testing & Comparing? by Kristian Vättö on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 Remember that 2big has two 3.5" hard drives in RAID 0 (or RAID 1 or JBOD if you want), thus sustained 327MB/s sounds reasonable. eSATA 6Gb/s would be sufficient for that but eSATA 3Gb/s would bottleneck it a bit. 
Kristian Vättö Reply RE: Testing & Comparing? by zorxd on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 Except that you don't plug 2 SATA hard drives on a single port.You use two ports, so SATA 300 is more than enough.
zorxd Reply RE: Testing & Comparing? by repoman27 on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 Most external enclosures, regardless of the number of drives they can hold, only offer a single eSATA port for connection to the host. So yes, it is quite common to connect 2 or more SATA drives within an external enclosure to a host using a single eSATA cable.The test that would provide the data the original poster was hoping for could be done by pitting the LaCie 2big Thunderbolt series up against the 2big USB 3.0 and 2big Quadra using eSATA. The 2big Quadra would no doubt be the slowest of the pack seeing as it only offers an eSATA 3 Gbit/s connection. I actually just did a quick search for a 2-bay eSATA 6 Gbit/s enclosure, and surprisingly was unable to find a single one.
repoman27 Reply RE: Testing & Comparing? by Zak on Thursday, February 16, 2012 What if I want to plug 4 or more drives in RAID and I don't want four or more separate enclosures and max possible speed? 
Zak Reply RE: Testing & Comparing? by zorxd on Thursday, February 16, 2012 According to http://www.anandtech.com/show/5042/seagates-new-ba...The fastest 7200rpm SATA hard drives do not even get 150MB/s when doing sequential readings. That's why I don't really believe the 327MB/s numbers, unless they count cache reading speed.
In the real life I don't think anyone would notice the SATA 3Gb/s bottleneck, especially since a lot of stuff is actually random access instead of sequential.
And we all know Lacie will ask twice as much for this Thunderbolt solution, so it's not going to be worth it.
zorxd Reply RE: Testing & Comparing? by Kristian Vättö on Thursday, February 16, 2012 See this: http://www.storagereview.com/hitachi_deskstar_7k30...Under the "fastest performance", the drive achieves up to 163MB/s. Of course the numbers LaCie claims are the absolute maximums but judging by that review, they are somewhat reasonable. I think ~300MB/s in real world sounds plausible,
Kristian Vättö Reply RE: Testing & Comparing? by repoman27 on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 While 327 MB/s would probably be achievable over USB 3.0 using the same pair of HDD's, the highest number I've ever seen posted in an AnandTech article for single controller sequential USB 3.0 throughput is 326 MB/s (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4688/highpoints-rock... The highest throughput claim that Renesas (NEC) has made for their latest USB 3.0 controller and UAS driver is only 370 MB/s. Even the USB-IF indicates that the upper limit for real world USB 3.0 throughput is right around 400 MB/s. 654 (twice 327) is a significantly larger number than 400 (the maximum speed of USB 3.0).This particular device is limited by the HDD's used. The Thunderbolt controller is good for 1000 MB/s, and (if it is indeed using the same chip as the Thunderbolt LBD) the SATA controller is a Marvell 88SE9182, 2-port, 6 Gbit/s controller capable of 490 MB/s sequential reads on a single port (http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/gigab... Unfortunately, the other limiting factor is the lack of Mac OS X driver support for the 88SE9182, which only allows 3 Gbit/s link speeds to be negotiated for the attached drives.
Thus as Kristian pointed out, the result is similar to connecting two drives in RAID 0 via a single eSATA 6 Gbit/s port.
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