14 DAY TRIAL // LaCie, maker of external storage solutions, has announced its 2big Thunderbolt Series of external hard drives with Thunderbolt interface starting at $649 (around 495 EUR) for 4 TB of storage.
An interface for connecting peripheral devices to a computer via an expansion bus, Thunderbolt was introduced by Apple (commercially) with its new MacBook Pro lineup on February 24, 2011. It uses the same connector as Mini DisplayPort.
With speeds of up to 327MB/s, LaCie’s Thunderbolt-enabled 2big delivers speeds three times faster than FireWire 800 and, “for data transfer gurus, that means 1TB of data – that's nearly 235,000 MP3's, 750 iTunes movies, or more than 450,000 photos” that can be offloaded in less than an hour, according to its makers.
The solution also lets users daisy chain multiple 2big Thunderbolt devices. Other cool features include RAID flexibility, Mac OS X support, hot-swappable drives, and an aluminum heat sink for efficient cooling.
“Use Disk Utility on your Mac OS to configure the 2big Thunderbolt Series into a RAID array that suits your needs,” LaCie explains. “It's possible to set it up as a mirrored RAID set (RAID 1), which provides data protection if one disk fails. Thanks to its removable disks, you can simply replace a disk, with zero data loss and no work interruption.”
Users can maximize speed and capacity for large file storage and fast transfers by alternately configuring 2big as a striped RAID set (RAID 0).
“It even supports JBOD, which lets you assign each disk to a specific data storage task,” the manufacturer notes. “For instance, you can put backups for even weeks on one disk, and odd weeks on the other.”
Last, but certainly not least, its design complements Apple’s aluminum iMac better than anything on the market (except for Apple’s own Time Capsule, of course).
For those who want to be alerted when a disk needs maintenance, LaCie offers the RAID Monitor software for the 2big Thunderbolt Series. The software also identifies which drive has failed, and even assists you in troubleshooting the problem.