LaCie unveils 48TB Thunderbolt 2 drive, Dropbox upgrades Pro plans to 1TB
Apple users gained two additional high-capacity storage options on Wednesday, as external drive maker LaCie showed off its new rack-mount Thunderbolt 2 drive in a 48 terabyte configuration and cloud storage firm Dropbox announced that its $9.99-per-month Pro plan will now include 1 terabyte of space.
LaCie says the 8big Rack is the fastest Thunderbolt 2 drive available, boasting transfer speeds up to 1,330 megabytes per second. It comes equipped with eight six-terabyte Seagate hard drives spinning at 7,200 rotations per minute that the company promises will deliver better throughput and simpler setup than competing fibre channel products.
"Thunderbolt delivers unparalleled performance, flexibility and simplicity to 4K video workflows," Intel Thunderbolt marketing chief Jason Ziller said. "Products like the LaCie 8big Rack help highlight what Thunderbolt makes possible for video editors."
As its name implies, the 8big Rack is designed to fit into a standard 1U rack space. The drive is available now from LaCie for $4,999.99 in the 48-terabyte configuration or $2,799.99 and $1,699.99 for 24-terabyte and 12-terabyte models, respectively.
Dropbox, meanwhile, announced a substantial space increase for its Dropbox Pro consumer product. The company bumped the capacity of the base $9.99-per-month plan from 100 gigabytes to 1 terabyte, and file version history will now be included for free.
Alongside the storage upgrades, Dropbox also announced new privacy options, including passwords and expirations for shared links and view-only permissions for shared folders. Users will also be able to remotely wipe the contents of their Dropbox folder on lost or stolen devices.
LaCie says the 8big Rack is the fastest Thunderbolt 2 drive available, boasting transfer speeds up to 1,330 megabytes per second. It comes equipped with eight six-terabyte Seagate hard drives spinning at 7,200 rotations per minute that the company promises will deliver better throughput and simpler setup than competing fibre channel products.
"Thunderbolt delivers unparalleled performance, flexibility and simplicity to 4K video workflows," Intel Thunderbolt marketing chief Jason Ziller said. "Products like the LaCie 8big Rack help highlight what Thunderbolt makes possible for video editors."
As its name implies, the 8big Rack is designed to fit into a standard 1U rack space. The drive is available now from LaCie for $4,999.99 in the 48-terabyte configuration or $2,799.99 and $1,699.99 for 24-terabyte and 12-terabyte models, respectively.
Dropbox, meanwhile, announced a substantial space increase for its Dropbox Pro consumer product. The company bumped the capacity of the base $9.99-per-month plan from 100 gigabytes to 1 terabyte, and file version history will now be included for free.
Alongside the storage upgrades, Dropbox also announced new privacy options, including passwords and expirations for shared links and view-only permissions for shared folders. Users will also be able to remotely wipe the contents of their Dropbox folder on lost or stolen devices.
Comments
Always liked the look of LaCie kit; just not the reliability.
I agree, I had problems with their old cartridge drives and have never bought from them again.
Looked at LaCie's implementation and have a few comments/questions. They include dual power supplies and a cable management arm, which are both good. I personally like the fact it's pre-configured as RAID 5. Their advertising shows a 36U rack but this requires a boatload of jumper cables. They say they include one TB cable so it appears you'd have enough to properly attach all of these RAID cabinets to the six ports on a Mac Pro. I guess using these in an Xsan configuration would work best if Apple would produce a new dedicated Xsan controller (stripped Mac Pro?) and if Xsan works over TB2. (anybody know if this is possible?) I'm also leery of Seagate drives since their larger drives haven't shown a good history of running for very long. LaCie only lists 3TB and 6TB drives as being compatible (https://www.lacie.com/more/?id=10157). I'm sure they'll also list the 8TB drives when they become available. I'm worried that Seagate is racing to the limits of disk density too fast. They want to win but are forgetting the drives have to be reliable. At LaCie's price of ~$100/TB (24TB and 48TB models), it's going to be something to look at but I'll wait until someone else buys one and see how well it works.
Is it too much to ask that we get an ultra-portable 4TB SSD ThunderBolt 2 external drive?
Are you asking for a single 4TB SSD or a tightly packed set of 4-1TB SSDs? What does ultra-portable mean to you? Someone should be able to put four SSDs into a 3x5 pack 2" thick, which should be enough to handle I/O, RAID and other circuitry. That's a bit bulky to me but I'd want a safe to hold a 4TB single drive. I also wonder whether an SSD can actually handle TB2 throughput or if TB1 is fast enough for a single drive.
Apple offered to acquire them a while back but they turned it down.
Now their business model is being squeezed by large tech companies that can afford to offer cheap cloud storage as part of their ecosystem--not just Apple--but Amazon, Microsoft and Google as well. It is not sustainable unless they can add value to what is otherwise just commodity storage.
They might as well start an email service and charge money for it.
Impressive from Lacie though who here can tell me about their pro products versus their consumer products? Every Lacie drive I've had has failed on me due to power supply.
I like their drives, but I've also had the same problem. Anymore, I just call tech support and tell them the power supply sounds like "crackling bacon" and they send a replacement.
I'd be very happy to see a cheap 4TB SSD ... let alone the rest!
Dropbox had their chance.
Apple offered to acquire them a while back but they turned it down.
Now their business model is being squeezed by large tech companies that can afford to offer cheap cloud storage as part of their ecosystem--not just Apple--but Amazon, Microsoft and Google as well. It is not sustainable unless they can add value to what is otherwise just commodity storage.
They might as well start an email service and charge money for it.
So true. The only thing they've got going for them is that they can claim to be truly platform agnostic, while Apple, Microsoft, and Google will always be suspect in that regard.
Personally, though, I won't trust 1 TB of files to a company that is small enough to be bought out by Google.
Bus-powered would be good. For some reason the Lacie ones don't offer it. The Pegasus J2 does but reviews say it drops in performance a lot when using bus-power:
http://www.amazon.com/PROMISE-TECHNOLOGY-Pegasus-DAS-Array/dp/B00A8UBMAE
I doubt a single drive 4TB SSD will arrive this year but maybe 2TB, which would allow dual drive enclosures to offer 4TB.
Always liked the look of LaCie kit; just not the reliability.
You spout this nonsense as if it’s fact. How about some real facts other than your anecdotal opinion? Why is it that every single product ever released has some bozo claiming it’s junk? From mobile carriers to hard drive manufacturers, from refrigerator makers to HDTV makers there’s always somebody who knows more than the rest of us claiming junk status of something.
Other then counting Google ‘hits’ and Apple discussion forum ‘views’ do you have anything to back up your claim? Real facts, real analysis?
Dropbox had their chance.
Apple offered to acquire them a while back but they turned it down.
Now their business model is being squeezed by large tech companies that can afford to offer cheap cloud storage as part of their ecosystem--not just Apple--but Amazon, Microsoft and Google as well. It is not sustainable unless they can add value to what is otherwise just commodity storage.
They might as well start an email service and charge money for it.
Too late for this customer. I switched away from them after three years. They seem reactive and slow. Other cloud services have provided cheaper alternatives for some time.
When iCloud Drive was announced, I was dead set on switching over from Dropbox. Now I'm torn!
Is iCloud a backup cloud service? Dropbox really isn't. Dropbox is really intended for workgroups who work on shared files.
Need to do more research.
Amazon S3 and Glacier are definitely backup services. So if you delete on your computer, you are not deleting on the cloud. They are two separate entities.
The bad about Dropbox, you delete from your designated Dropbox folder, you delete your "backup" (not really a backup).
However the new BitTorrent Sync client caught my eye too.... just need to run one offsite.
Here's hoping that iCloud Drive gives us a psuedo-file system.
Always liked the look of LaCie kit; just not the reliability.
You spout this nonsense as if it’s fact. How about some real facts other than your anecdotal opinion? Why is it that every single product ever released has some bozo claiming it’s junk? From mobile carriers to hard drive manufacturers, from refrigerator makers to HDTV makers there’s always somebody who knows more than the rest of us claiming junk status of something.
Other then counting Google ‘hits’ and Apple discussion forum ‘views’ do you have anything to back up your claim? Real facts, real analysis?
I don't, but I also believe this to be true. The preponderance of anecdotal accounts may not qualify as "proof" but when combined with my personal experience, I'm inclined to believe that reliability of LaCie products, particularly their power supplies, is not very good compared to other manufacturers of similar products.
With a stable of only four Quadra drives I had three failures -- one was either the drive or controller, the other two were power supplies. Of the four G-Tech drives we've owned, none have ever failed under similar use. Nor have either of our WDs.
When I was shopping for a RAID I asked LaCie why they continue to use line-lump power supplies, which are a hassle, in a device that has plenty of room for an internal power supply. Their response was that they keep the most common failure point separate so one doesn't have to ship off the whole drive when the power supply fails. I did not receive a reply to my follow-up asking why they don't just use better power supplies and try to remedy that kind of failure altogether.
I had a LaCie power supply fail too. I was a bit perplexed as to what happen to my external FW drive. The light came on as normal but the drive wouldn't spin up. I suspected the failure was in the drive since the light was on. I took it apart and stuck the bare drive in a computer and it mounted no problem, it was a Seagate. So it turned out it was the power supply. It just wasn't putting out enough power to spin the drive even though the light was still on. I would not be inclined to buy this RAID box due to my own experience with LaCie equipment. I prefer WD drives as well. Been using them for years. I have had a couple Seagates go bad but not WDs, but you never know what the long term service is going to be on either brand. I have WD Blacks, and Blues that have been spinning 24/7 for up to 7 years no issues at all.