LaCie 2big 8TB questions

[howlert]

I am thinking of getting a LaCie 2big 8TB external HDD enclosure, but I would like to know the following first:

1. I don't suppose I could just get the enclosure and buy the HHDs separately?
2. There are two Thunderbolt ports on the back, but do those correspond to the two separate HHDs or can I daisy chain with those? Now I know it says it's possible to do so, but I plan to make both HDDs separately recognised, I don't like RAID 0 config.
3. What SATA version does it use?
4. Can I use higher than 4TB HDDs when they're released, how future proof is this thing?

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

4TB. That's an awful lot of stuff to lose when one dies.

 

[kenrivers]

According to the LaCie product page - http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10573 - the second Thunderbolt connection can be used for daisy chaining drives and since the drives are hot swappable in RAID 1 it looks as though you could change the drives out whenever you want. You would need to contact LaCie about whether or not it will support drives larger than 4TB. I could be wrong but I think you only need the one Thunderbolt cable. How many Thunderbolt ports does you computer have?

 

[howlert]

Well I don't know yet because I haven't bought the Mac I want, but I was wondering if each of the Thunderbolt ports corresponded to each HDD, but I too did read about daisy chaining, it's just that I wanted to have them recognised separately.

You're right, I think I'll contact them directly.

 

[kenrivers]

I would think the one cable would be used to access the enclosure but both drives would be recognized as separate drive since you will be using it as JBOD and not in a RAID configuration. Just out of curiosity, desktop or laptop purchase?

 

[howlert]

LaCie got back to me real quick and gave me the following answers, which covered everything:

1. I don't suppose you just sell the enclosure and buy the HHDs separately?

Unfortunately no, our Thunderbolt RAID solutions come with HDD.

2. Obviously this is a dual Thunderbolt model, however if I configure both HDDs to be recognised separately then will each HDD only be recognised by one of the Thunderbolt ports, or will one port be able to read from each one?

Dual Thunderbolt ports are included for daisychaining multiple Thunderbolt enabled devices together. Formatting each HDD individually will be accessible via one Thunderbolt port.

3. What SATA version does it use?

The HDD use have SATA 6GB/s interfaces.

4. Can I use higher than 4TB HDDs when they're released, how future proof is this thing?

As is the case with all technology, nothing can be guaranteed to be future proof. Given that 5TB HDD are not avilable yet, the behaviour and compatibility cannot be confirmed at this time. In some cases, firmware updates may be required for compatibility with larger HDD capacities.

5. What HDDs do you ship the product with (the 4TB HDDs, equal to a total of 8TB).

Predominantly the HDDs supplied with our products are Seagate however, due to supply and demand HDDs can be sourced from different manufacturers and used in our products at any time.


Pretty good customer support.