If you are in possession of MAC mini, MACBook Air, MACBook Pro or an iMAC, then you have very limited options, especially if you are looking for a fancy device to be connected to your Thunderbolt port. You are very much familiar with the Apple’s Thunderbolt display, the Pegasus R4 and R6 arrays and now the fanciest thing to be connected to your Thunderbolt port is the impressive Little Big Disk of the Thunderbolt series, a product of LaCie.
The Thunderbolt series drives are portable, external two drive RAIDS and of aluminium material. The OS X disk utility of your MAC machine can be utilized to configure the drive as stripped array or mirrored.
The purchase of a Thunderbolt cable is mandatory to equip your MAC system with the Little Big Disk. The LaCie manufacturer provides the 1TB Quadra, which is cheaper than the 1TB Thunderbolt version and it also, includes all the cables that you need.
A pair of Thunderbolt ports is the only connection type supported by the Thunderbolt series of drives. A lot of MAC computers are equipped with an onboard Thunderbolt ports, but an assortment of connectors are most useful with these kinds of drives. Having two Thunderbolt ports, you can daisy chain two or more Thunderbolt gadgets or even deploying the Mini DisplayPort, MAC Cinema Display can also be set up.
LaCie drive is portable. So, therefore, it needs external power. 3.5 inch drives are preferred for their fast speed when using an external power, as compared to the 2.5 inch drives. LaCie drives are twice as fast as its similar RAID array, the Avastor XMR Mobile RAID drive. Both the gadgets were tested using FireWire 800.
The Little Big Disk outclassed the Avastor RAID array drive by clocking 207 MBps, as compared to 75 MBps of the later. As an example of both, the Little Big Disk works at 167 MBps when reading a 2GB file, as compared to Avastor RAID Array drive working at 74.5 MBps while doing the same task.
The Pegasus R6 12TB RAID Array performs almost 6 percent more than the LaCie drive when reading the same 2GB file. This performance test got 15 percent better for Pegasus to read the folder, 22 percent better for reading the file and as much as 27 percent better than the LaCie drive for the folder write test. Another test of the two devices using the AJA system showed that the Pegasus clocked 532 MBps for the read test and as much as 707.6 MBps on the write test.
To say the least, Little Big Drive of the Thunderbolt Series is an exceptional gadget to be used with the MAC machines and that too at a reasonable price of just £399.
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