How is a drive affordable if it costs 5X as much as any other external drive? by my calculations the drive will cost $450 to install before anybody pays taxes. That is for a 1 TB magnetic drive. So relative to other drives on the market how is that affordable?
How is a drive affordable if it costs 5X as much as any other external drive? by my calculations the drive will cost $450 to install before anybody pays taxes. That is for a 1 TB magnetic drive. So relative to other drives on the market how is that affordable?
Is LaCie about to contract for some advertising space on Appleinsider? I'm just looking for a reason for the terribly misleading headline. It would almost be understandable if their where money involved.
DAVE!
LaCie is always expensive. This is nothing new. If they sell something for $400, you can bet some other company will offer a similar product for less.
I bought a 1 TB 2.5" bare drive for about $120 (incl. taxes) about half a year ago and it was the cheapest price I could find in my country.
$120 for a 1TB (not sure what your tax rate is so let's leave it at that) doesn't mean the 500 will be $100. I haven't even noticed any laptop/2.5" drives above 1TB. If they exist they aren't mass market items yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Scrip
It's a performance drive!
Laptop video editing... or any other task that requires fast throughput.
You're right... this is not a drive for backups or long-term storage.
The caldigit will probably give you longer period of reliable service. Calling it a performance drive doesn't change much. The issue I've had with past models is that they're way too hot even when idling. Indicating that the drive is for performance doesn't mean much if you can't run it for very long at a given time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
LaCie is always expensive. This is nothing new. If they sell something for $400, you can bet some other company will offer a similar product for less.
Yes always expensive, but not necessarily produced or supported any better than other options. They just look pretty and somehow have a good marketing team. Pretty much every product they make is just OEMed from another manufacturer with little input on the Lacie end. Take their displays for example, samsung or NEC tech, oemed copy of coloreyes display, rebadged X-rite sensor, and display hood by whoever. I'd be fine with this if they actually did something to improve upon the combination and its usability as a whole. As it is they don't even have competent technical support. FYI I don't buy their products. I've merely had the unpleasant experience of using many of them owned by others.
The pegasus 4TB enclosure was technically under $1000.
This is just misleading. Lacie has done this little big disk thing for years. They use a cheap controller, minimal cooling, and are not serviceable. If one of the two drives died on previous models the thing was dead. Its pricing should in no way be on par with a raid enclosure when they're aren't marketing it as such anyway (and never have in the past). I've steered people away from these for years. Many people would buy their firewire versions, leave them on all day in spite of heat, and then they'd die just after the warranty expired. Lacie also makes an inconsistent line of displays, and their sales guys don't even know a thing about their product line.
They chose 2.5" drives so that they could easily swap in SSD versions later. There's not much reason beyond this. Anyway it's 2x 500 GB drives so the cost difference shouldn't be so great in manufacturing because it's not using the highest density options.
We don't all have to be happy whenever something is announced. Frankly this company has made a lot of junk that just happens to match the all aluminum motif of macs. They don't even design half of their own products. They are simply rebundled/rebadged.
You should fact check yourself on pricing. They don't use retail packaged hard drives. They buy up whatever oem product they can, which can be purchased for more like $50-60 on newegg. Obviously these guys are buying them at wholesale rates. In my experience they have buggy controllers, and the terrible cooling sucks. If you want any kind of longevity from the device it's the kind of thing you turn on, use, turn off immediately as they don't have enough airflow to run the device for hours at a time.
Amen. I will NEVER buy another Lacie product so long as I live. I owned 3 Lacie drives, all about 1 month old. One of the drives failed and almost started a house fire (melted the entire enclosure). The other two failed shortly thereafter.
These were premium priced drives, with a design that would have made a Hyundai look smart.
This is just misleading. Lacie has done this little big disk thing for years. They use a cheap controller, minimal cooling, and are not serviceable. If one of the two drives died on previous models the thing was dead. Its pricing should in no way be on par with a raid enclosure when they're aren't marketing it as such anyway (and never have in the past). I've steered people away from these for years. Many people would buy their firewire versions, leave them on all day in spite of heat, and then they'd die just after the warranty expired. Lacie also makes an inconsistent line of displays, and their sales guys don't even know a thing about their product line.
I don't really see how it's misleading — it IS a RAID 0 enclosure, in point of fact — but I certainly won't argue with you about them being any good or not.
As others have said, RAID 0 doesn't make a lot of sense for long-term storage or back-up, and I've had tons of bad experiences with LaCies. I had a bunch of external enclosures from them from before I knew better, and they were pretty, but garbage. Their power supplies in particular failed left and right. (Over half of mine failed just outside of warranty.)
I swear by OWC enclosures and Western Digital Caviar Blacks now. (And if I could afford them, I'd get OWC's SSDs.) I'm sure someone else has had bad experiences with them, too, but I've had zero problems with either company's products… so far…
I got a Western Digital 1TB (2.5" external) 5400RPM USB 3.0 (backwards compatible to USB 2.0) Passport Essential drive for $58.70 including tax from Staples in late August.
Not sure about this product as it seems to offer poor TB performance but still at a premium price. Perhaps using hybrids would have made sense for this one.
I don't really see how it's misleading — it IS a RAID 0 enclosure, in point of fact — but I certainly won't argue with you about them being any good or not.
They just market it as a large disk, and they've done this for a long time. Not everyone who buys them even understands/recognizes it as a raid enclosure. I don't really see this as a feature when the company who sells them doesn't even lay claim to it. In this case it does offer you more throughput, but (from past experience) at the cost of a stable device. All hard drives offer some risk of crashing but Lacie has just been too erratic in the past to write it off as a performance model. If you're in need of such performance you might be running it hard for several hours at a time. After that I can't even pick one of these up with how hot it gets. Yes that means the aluminum is pulling away heat from the internals, but not enough, and it's not always a hard drive that dies. More commonly it's one of the controllers. In the case of the single disk options from Lacie if a drive dies you can often just force open the case and mount the actual hard drive in a mac pro, drive dock, etc. to retrieve any data that was not yet backed up.
Edit: That trick doesn't work with the raid 0 type drive enclosures lacie makes.
Are there any AI employees who are competent writers?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jcgarza
Really depressing to see that the first few comments are from people who seem to get off on criticizing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ConradJoe
Horrible, isn't it? Depressing as hell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jkgm
Only in marketing-speak. To humans, $999.99 means $1000.
Umm, besides post #1, me thinks he was referring to you, also, Conrad, my friend.
Isn't one penny under a larger price (in this case 4 digits to make it 3 digits) stated for psychological (marketing purposes) reasons? Anyway you slice it, it's still a grand.
Just like those who say Apple should split their stock. What difference does it make if one buys or owns 1 share @ $400 or 2 shares @ $200? I shake my head at people that say they'd rather wait until the stock splits before the buy in so they can afford more shares. No matter how many share one owns, if the stock rises 10%, one still realizes the same 10% gain.
Pardon my ignorance here but do current SATA II drives max out their bandwidth yet? Just wondering if there is anything to gain here with this technology.
Yes that means the aluminum is pulling away heat from the internals, but not enough, and it's not always a hard drive that dies. More commonly it's one of the controllers. In the case of the single disk options from Lacie if a drive dies you can often just force open the case and mount the actual hard drive in a mac pro, drive dock, etc. to retrieve any data that was not yet backed up.
Many times with these cheap externals it is the power brick that is the first to go. You think the hard drive or controller is shot so you take it apart to mount as you suggested in a Mac Pro but you should first try replacing the brick with another one that you probably already have laying around from the last cheap drive you bought that went belly up. Even though the lights come on, you may hear some clicking noise, that could indicate low voltage. Not enough voltage to spin the drive but enough to turn on the LEDs.
Not sure about this product as it seems to offer poor TB performance but still at a premium price. Perhaps using hybrids would have made sense for this one.
I was more referencing his comment about 1TB 5400rpm 2.5" HDDs costing between $120 and $140.
If I can get a 2.5" 1TB 5400rpm HDD (not to mention the extra manufacturing cost of the enclosure, + USB 3.0 interface + cable + packaging) for less than $60 RETAIL, I'd think that these manufacturers like LaCie are getting bare drives way the hell cheaper than that.
Even if you were to figure $50 a piece their cost for 5400rpm 1TB drives, you're still looking at $100 in hard drives plus $400 for the enclosure/controller (if we're talking the $499 2TB version). Something just doesn't add up. Not to mention, you still have to add in $50 for the Thunderbolt cable.
Pardon my ignorance here but do current SATA II drives max out their bandwidth yet? Just wondering if there is anything to gain here with this technology.
Comments
How is a drive affordable if it costs 5X as much as any other external drive? by my calculations the drive will cost $450 to install before anybody pays taxes. That is for a 1 TB magnetic drive. So relative to other drives on the market how is that affordable?
It's also RAID 0 and fast as hell.
It's not a consumer drive
It's also RAID 0 and fast as hell.
It's not a consumer drive
What part of the article did you not understand?
LaCie offers the first opportunity for average consumers to begin adopting the technology as a means of high-speed data transfer in their homes.
How is a drive affordable if it costs 5X as much as any other external drive? by my calculations the drive will cost $450 to install before anybody pays taxes. That is for a 1 TB magnetic drive. So relative to other drives on the market how is that affordable?
Is LaCie about to contract for some advertising space on Appleinsider? I'm just looking for a reason for the terribly misleading headline. It would almost be understandable if their where money involved.
DAVE!
LaCie is always expensive. This is nothing new. If they sell something for $400, you can bet some other company will offer a similar product for less.
Isn't $999.99 also "sub-$1000"?
Are there any AI employees who are competent writers?
I hope he mean significantly less. I picked that up as well.
What part of the article did you not understand?
I wasn't responding to the article... I was replying to someone who basically said: "this drive costs 5X more than any other 1TB drive"
I was merely pointing out one of the reasons... it's RAID 0 and fast as hell... with a new interface and the appropriate early adopter tax.
It's the same sorta comment people make whenever SSDs are discussed: "I can get _____ for way cheaper than that!"
I wasn't responding to the article... I was replying to someone who basically said: "this drive costs 5X more than any other 1TB drive"
I was merely pointing out one of the reasons... it's RAID 0 and fast as hell... with a new interface and the appropriate early adopter tax.
It's the same sorta comment people make whenever SSDs are discussed: "I can get _____ for way cheaper than that!"
Why would anyone use RAID-0 for external storage? That seems incredibly stupid to me.
Why would anyone use RAID-0 for external storage? That seems incredibly stupid to me.
It's a performance drive!
Laptop video editing... or any other task that requires fast throughput.
You're right... this is not a drive for backups or long-term storage.
And neither are these:
http://www.caldigit.com/VR_mini/
http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-raid-mini.cfm
Why would anyone use RAID-0 for external storage? That seems incredibly stupid to me.
Maybe because the MTF is about 120 days.
Isn't $999.99 also "sub-$1000"?
Are there any AI employees who are competent writers?
Well, you have to buy a $50 TB cable unless you managed to get one for free...
I bought a 1 TB 2.5" bare drive for about $120 (incl. taxes) about half a year ago and it was the cheapest price I could find in my country.
$120 for a 1TB (not sure what your tax rate is so let's leave it at that) doesn't mean the 500 will be $100. I haven't even noticed any laptop/2.5" drives above 1TB. If they exist they aren't mass market items yet.
It's a performance drive!
Laptop video editing... or any other task that requires fast throughput.
You're right... this is not a drive for backups or long-term storage.
And neither are these:
http://www.caldigit.com/VR_mini/
http://www.g-technology.com/products/g-raid-mini.cfm
The caldigit will probably give you longer period of reliable service. Calling it a performance drive doesn't change much. The issue I've had with past models is that they're way too hot even when idling. Indicating that the drive is for performance doesn't mean much if you can't run it for very long at a given time.
LaCie is always expensive. This is nothing new. If they sell something for $400, you can bet some other company will offer a similar product for less.
Yes always expensive, but not necessarily produced or supported any better than other options. They just look pretty and somehow have a good marketing team. Pretty much every product they make is just OEMed from another manufacturer with little input on the Lacie end. Take their displays for example, samsung or NEC tech, oemed copy of coloreyes display, rebadged X-rite sensor, and display hood by whoever. I'd be fine with this if they actually did something to improve upon the combination and its usability as a whole. As it is they don't even have competent technical support. FYI I don't buy their products. I've merely had the unpleasant experience of using many of them owned by others.
The pegasus 4TB enclosure was technically under $1000.
This is just misleading. Lacie has done this little big disk thing for years. They use a cheap controller, minimal cooling, and are not serviceable. If one of the two drives died on previous models the thing was dead. Its pricing should in no way be on par with a raid enclosure when they're aren't marketing it as such anyway (and never have in the past). I've steered people away from these for years. Many people would buy their firewire versions, leave them on all day in spite of heat, and then they'd die just after the warranty expired. Lacie also makes an inconsistent line of displays, and their sales guys don't even know a thing about their product line.
They chose 2.5" drives so that they could easily swap in SSD versions later. There's not much reason beyond this. Anyway it's 2x 500 GB drives so the cost difference shouldn't be so great in manufacturing because it's not using the highest density options.
We don't all have to be happy whenever something is announced. Frankly this company has made a lot of junk that just happens to match the all aluminum motif of macs. They don't even design half of their own products. They are simply rebundled/rebadged.
You should fact check yourself on pricing. They don't use retail packaged hard drives. They buy up whatever oem product they can, which can be purchased for more like $50-60 on newegg. Obviously these guys are buying them at wholesale rates. In my experience they have buggy controllers, and the terrible cooling sucks. If you want any kind of longevity from the device it's the kind of thing you turn on, use, turn off immediately as they don't have enough airflow to run the device for hours at a time.
Amen. I will NEVER buy another Lacie product so long as I live. I owned 3 Lacie drives, all about 1 month old. One of the drives failed and almost started a house fire (melted the entire enclosure). The other two failed shortly thereafter.
These were premium priced drives, with a design that would have made a Hyundai look smart.
This is just misleading. Lacie has done this little big disk thing for years. They use a cheap controller, minimal cooling, and are not serviceable. If one of the two drives died on previous models the thing was dead. Its pricing should in no way be on par with a raid enclosure when they're aren't marketing it as such anyway (and never have in the past). I've steered people away from these for years. Many people would buy their firewire versions, leave them on all day in spite of heat, and then they'd die just after the warranty expired. Lacie also makes an inconsistent line of displays, and their sales guys don't even know a thing about their product line.
I don't really see how it's misleading — it IS a RAID 0 enclosure, in point of fact — but I certainly won't argue with you about them being any good or not.
As others have said, RAID 0 doesn't make a lot of sense for long-term storage or back-up, and I've had tons of bad experiences with LaCies. I had a bunch of external enclosures from them from before I knew better, and they were pretty, but garbage. Their power supplies in particular failed left and right. (Over half of mine failed just outside of warranty.)
I swear by OWC enclosures and Western Digital Caviar Blacks now. (And if I could afford them, I'd get OWC's SSDs.) I'm sure someone else has had bad experiences with them, too, but I've had zero problems with either company's products… so far…
[Stewie Griffin] "Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" {/Stewie Griffin]
I got a Western Digital 1TB (2.5" external) 5400RPM USB 3.0 (backwards compatible to USB 2.0) Passport Essential drive for $58.70 including tax from Staples in late August.
Works great with my 13" MacBook Air (2011)
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3253919
Not at 190MB/sec it doesn't.
Not sure about this product as it seems to offer poor TB performance but still at a premium price. Perhaps using hybrids would have made sense for this one.
I don't really see how it's misleading — it IS a RAID 0 enclosure, in point of fact — but I certainly won't argue with you about them being any good or not.
They just market it as a large disk, and they've done this for a long time. Not everyone who buys them even understands/recognizes it as a raid enclosure. I don't really see this as a feature when the company who sells them doesn't even lay claim to it. In this case it does offer you more throughput, but (from past experience) at the cost of a stable device. All hard drives offer some risk of crashing but Lacie has just been too erratic in the past to write it off as a performance model. If you're in need of such performance you might be running it hard for several hours at a time. After that I can't even pick one of these up with how hot it gets. Yes that means the aluminum is pulling away heat from the internals, but not enough, and it's not always a hard drive that dies. More commonly it's one of the controllers. In the case of the single disk options from Lacie if a drive dies you can often just force open the case and mount the actual hard drive in a mac pro, drive dock, etc. to retrieve any data that was not yet backed up.
Edit: That trick doesn't work with the raid 0 type drive enclosures lacie makes.
Isn't $999.99 also "sub-$1000"?
Are there any AI employees who are competent writers?
Really depressing to see that the first few comments are from people who seem to get off on criticizing.
Horrible, isn't it? Depressing as hell.
Only in marketing-speak. To humans, $999.99 means $1000.
Umm, besides post #1, me thinks he was referring to you, also, Conrad, my friend.
Isn't one penny under a larger price (in this case 4 digits to make it 3 digits) stated for psychological (marketing purposes) reasons? Anyway you slice it, it's still a grand.
Just like those who say Apple should split their stock. What difference does it make if one buys or owns 1 share @ $400 or 2 shares @ $200? I shake my head at people that say they'd rather wait until the stock splits before the buy in so they can afford more shares. No matter how many share one owns, if the stock rises 10%, one still realizes the same 10% gain.
Yes that means the aluminum is pulling away heat from the internals, but not enough, and it's not always a hard drive that dies. More commonly it's one of the controllers. In the case of the single disk options from Lacie if a drive dies you can often just force open the case and mount the actual hard drive in a mac pro, drive dock, etc. to retrieve any data that was not yet backed up.
Many times with these cheap externals it is the power brick that is the first to go. You think the hard drive or controller is shot so you take it apart to mount as you suggested in a Mac Pro but you should first try replacing the brick with another one that you probably already have laying around from the last cheap drive you bought that went belly up. Even though the lights come on, you may hear some clicking noise, that could indicate low voltage. Not enough voltage to spin the drive but enough to turn on the LEDs.
Not at 190MB/sec it doesn't.
Not sure about this product as it seems to offer poor TB performance but still at a premium price. Perhaps using hybrids would have made sense for this one.
I was more referencing his comment about 1TB 5400rpm 2.5" HDDs costing between $120 and $140.
If I can get a 2.5" 1TB 5400rpm HDD (not to mention the extra manufacturing cost of the enclosure, + USB 3.0 interface + cable + packaging) for less than $60 RETAIL, I'd think that these manufacturers like LaCie are getting bare drives way the hell cheaper than that.
Even if you were to figure $50 a piece their cost for 5400rpm 1TB drives, you're still looking at $100 in hard drives plus $400 for the enclosure/controller (if we're talking the $499 2TB version). Something just doesn't add up. Not to mention, you still have to add in $50 for the Thunderbolt cable.
Pardon my ignorance here but do current SATA II drives max out their bandwidth yet? Just wondering if there is anything to gain here with this technology.
SATA II generally means the 3 Gbps flavor, right?
Thunderbolt is 10 Gbps. So no. Not even close.