LaCie begins shipping first sub-$1000 Thunderbolt hard drives

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Storage manufacturer LaCie on Tuesday began shipping the first sub-$1000 external hard drives to take advantage of the high-speed Thunderbolt ports introduced across Apple's Mac product family this year.



Previously, the cheapest Thunderbolt storage solution was the 4TB, $999.99 Promise Pegasus which debuted in June.



Developed in collaboration with Intel under the codename "Light Peak", Thunderbolt I/O technology has the potential to reach transfer speeds of 10 Gbps over electrical or optical cables.



Until now, consumer-oriented Thunderbolt peripherals have been virtually nonexistent in the marketplace, curbed by the combination of high overhead costs for manufacturers and limited marketability -- both of which stem from the technology's relative infancy, having been introduced just six months ago.



As such, the single offering from Promise has been used mainly by media professionals as scratch drives and for high-speed video storage. This week's introduction of a smaller, less costly option from LaCie offers the first opportunity for average consumers to begin adopting the technology as a means of high-speed data transfer in their homes.



Since July, nearly all of Apple's Mac models incorporate Thunderbolt connectivity, with the exception of the ailing Mac Pro and legacy white MacBook lines, the latter of which remains available only to educational institutions.







LaCie's new external storage devices feature a pair of 2.5" drives in Mac OS RAID configuration, boasting read speeds of up to 190 MB/s. The RAID drives are available with either two 500GB 7200 RPM or two 1TB 5400 RPM hard disk drives, each featuring two connectors. According to LaCie, users can daisy chain several Little Big Disks to maximize Thunderbolt's capabilities and reach transfer rates of 800 MB/s.



As previously reported, LaCie will be releasing an SSD version of the drive in October that increases read speeds to over 480 MB/s.



The Little Big Disk is available for pre-order at the Apple online store for $399.95 for 1TB or 499.95 for 2TB of storage. In addition, a few units have been shipped to brick-and-mortar Apple retail stores ahead of broader distribution through Lacie.com and the device maker's reseller channel.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 70
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    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!
  • Reply 2 of 70
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    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!



    Affordable is relative and when you consider the first announced TB drives were over $1,000, these are affordable.
  • Reply 3 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    Storage manufacturer LaCie on Tuesday began shipping the first sub-$1000 external hard drives to take advantage of the high-speed Thunderbolt ports introduced across Apple's Mac product family this year.



    Previously, the cheapest Thunderbolt storage solution was the 4TB, $999.99 Promise Pegasus which debuted in June.




    Isn't $999.99 also "sub-$1000"?



    Are there any AI employees who are competent writers?
  • Reply 4 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    Is LaCie about to contract for some advertising space on Appleinsider?



    There's no reason to post insulting, baseless comments like this.



    They're not my definition of "affordable," either, but they're RAID drives.



    If you aren't in the market for that, wait for OWC or someone else to ship theirs, but there's no call for attacking AI over covering a news item.
  • Reply 5 of 70
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    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!



    Note these are 2.5" drives, not 3.5". That makes a big difference in cost. For instance, for bare HDDs from Newegg, a 1TB @5400RPM that is 2.5" is $120-140, but for 3.5" it's $55-60.
  • Reply 6 of 70
    Really depressing to see that the first few comments are from people who seem to get off on criticizing.
  • Reply 7 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Note these are 2.5" drives, not 3.5". That makes a big difference in cost. For instance, for bare HDDs from Newegg, a 1TB @5400RPM that is 2.5" is $120-140, but for 3.5" it's $55-60.



    And I would like those claiming this to be way too expensive to offer a quote for a RAID enclosure alongside their quotes for bare drives.

    Assume we can get 500 GB 2.5" 7200 rpm drives for $100 each, and a third-party dual-drive RAID enclosure for another $100, the price for TB (and the LaCie name maybe) is only $100. And compared to FW800 this promises to be at least twice as fast (and offering the option to add other fast peripherals at the end of the chain, which you cannot do if the first RAID already maxes out the FW800 bus).
  • Reply 8 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jcgarza View Post


    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.
  • Reply 9 of 70
    mazda 3smazda 3s Posts: 1,613member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Note these are 2.5" drives, not 3.5". That makes a big difference in cost. For instance, for bare HDDs from Newegg, a 1TB @5400RPM that is 2.5" is $120-140, but for 3.5" it's $55-60.



    [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
  • Reply 10 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ConradJoe View Post


    Isn't $999.99 also "sub-$1000"?



    Are there any AI employees who are competent writers?



    Only in marketing-speak. To humans, $999.99 means $1000.
  • Reply 11 of 70
    poochpooch Posts: 768member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ConradJoe View Post


    Are there any AI employees who are competent writers?



    know.
  • Reply 12 of 70
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aplnub View Post


    Affordable is relative and when you consider the first announced TB drives were over $1,000, these are affordable.



    The pegasus 4TB enclosure was technically under $1000.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gmcalpin View Post


    There's no reason to post insulting, baseless comments like this.



    They're not my definition of "affordable," either, but they're RAID drives.



    If you aren't in the market for that, wait for OWC or someone else to ship theirs, but there's no call for attacking AI over covering a news item.



    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.





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Note these are 2.5" drives, not 3.5". That makes a big difference in cost. For instance, for bare HDDs from Newegg, a 1TB @5400RPM that is 2.5" is $120-140, but for 3.5" it's $55-60.



    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.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jcgarza View Post


    Really depressing to see that the first few comments are from people who seem to get off on criticizing.



    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.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by noirdesir View Post


    And I would like those claiming this to be way too expensive to offer a quote for a RAID enclosure alongside their quotes for bare drives.

    Assume we can get 500 GB 2.5" 7200 rpm drives for $100 each, and a third-party dual-drive RAID enclosure for another $100, the price for TB (and the LaCie name maybe) is only $100. And compared to FW800 this promises to be at least twice as fast (and offering the option to add other fast peripherals at the end of the chain, which you cannot do if the first RAID already maxes out the FW800 bus).



    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.
  • Reply 13 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    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!



    I paid $800 for my first 10MB HardCard back in 1985 or 86 or so.
  • Reply 14 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hmm View Post


    You should fact check yourself on pricing. They don't use retail packaged hard drives.



    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.
  • Reply 15 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post


    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!



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aplnub View Post


    Affordable is relative and when you consider the first announced TB drives were over $1,000, these are affordable.



    As an alternative have a look at the Pegasus RAIDS:



    http://www.apple.com/search/?q=pegas...=global&geo=us



    You can get models from the 4TB @ $999 to the 12TB @ S1,999:





    I bought the 12TB for $150 more than I paid for a 2 TB LaCie Disk in 2006 (yes, it cost $1,749).



    I have 13 LaCie Drives 1 or 2 TB each. They are excellent drives -- no problems over 6 years. But the external power bricks fail within a year or so. I've had an 88% failure rate on LaCie power bricks.



    After going back and forth with support for several weeks -- I through in the towel and bought the Pegasus.



    I will use the LaCie drives for offline (on the shelf) or off site storage -- after all the replacements I have 5 working power bricks.



    I normally would not post this sort of information (don't like to badmouth in public), except at $129-$149 a pop, every year or so, it becomes a major expense.
  • Reply 16 of 70
    It bothers me that peripherals manufacturers can't be bothered to include nicer looking power bricks and cables (if included at all) with their premium products.
  • Reply 17 of 70
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zandros View Post


    It bothers me that peripherals manufacturers can't be bothered to include nicer looking power bricks and cables (if included at all) with their premium products.



    From the product order page: "Thunderbolt cable sold separately". So, not only does the product cost $100 more than quad interface counterpart (FW400+FW800+USB 2.0+eSATA), which comes with 4 cables, you need to add $49 to the running total of this Thunderbolt drive.
  • Reply 18 of 70
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by filburt View Post


    From the product order page: "Thunderbolt cable sold separately". So, not only does the product cost $100 more than quad interface counterpart (FW400+FW800+USB 2.0+eSATA), which comes with 4 cables, you need to add $49 to the running total of this Thunderbolt drive.



    So don't buy one. Problem solved.



    It amazes me that so many people do nothing but complain about the price of products. If the price is too high, buy something else.



    It's a brand new product category and the price will eventually come down. There's a premium involved in being on the cutting edge.
  • Reply 19 of 70
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    I have never had much faith in LaCie equipment, 2.5" drives either. Both seem like throw away disposable hardware. I'm getting 5+ years out of my WD caviars with soft RAID on Linux.
  • Reply 20 of 70
    I refuse to by a Thunderbolt cable until Monoprice.com sells them. And, I won't buy an enclosure for TB till it costs the same as the other interfaces. Not that anyone gives a poot what I think.
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