On Tuesday, LaCie finally made the Little Big Disk with Thunderbolt hard drive available to the public through the Apple Retail Store and the Apple Online Store. The LaCie drive was originally announced in February.
Ever since Thunderbolt made its debut in the MacBook Pro seven months ago, there have been a few Thunderbolt-based peripherals released. Most of the devices are targeted at professional video editors—video capture boxes such as the Aja Io XT or the Blackmagic Intensity Extreme, or high-end RAID arrays like the Promise Pegasus R4 and R6. While the Little Big Disk is designed to provide the speed video editors and photographers desire, its small size, simple form, and portability makes it appealing to the general consumer who has a Thunderbolt Mac.
The Little Big Disk features a pair of 2.5-inch hard drives, preconfigured for the Mac as a RAID 0. You can reconfigure the array to a RAID 1 or JBOD. The 1TB Little Big Disk has a pair of 7200-rpm drives, while the 2TB version has two 5400-rpm drives. LaCie claims that the drive is capable of read speeds of 190MBps (Thunderbolt is rated at 10Gbps throughput).
The 1TB Little Big Disk is $399. The 2TB Little Big Disk is $499. At the time of this article, the Apple Online Store said that the drives ship in one to two weeks.
LaCie does not include a Thunderbolt cable with the drive. You must purchase a $49 Thunderbolt cable separately from Apple, which is currently the only provider of the cable.
LaCie also has a version of the Little Big Disk with solid-state drives (SSDs) that the company says will ship in October.
From September 20 until October 13, 2011, LaCie is giving away a Little Big Disk. Contest details are available on LaCie’s Facebook page.
Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series 2TB
Read our full Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series 2TB review
Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Series 1TB