The Little Big Disk is simply the fastest way to back up your data, but it’s also, finally, a delivery on Apple’s promise that Thunderbolt would do crazy things to our tech lives. That promise came true.
What Is It?
An extremely fast solid state external hard drive that uses Thunderbolt.
Who’s it For?
Anyone with data to backup, data to share and a lot of money.
Design
It’s a big, heavy, industrial grey brick that you shouldn’t look at frequently anyway. Put it somewhere safe! An extra Thunderbolt port is a nice touch.
Using It
The Little Big Disk works just like every other external hard drive you’ve ever used in your life.
The Best Part
It’s really, really, really, really fast: 240MB/sec read speeds, 461MB/sec write. In human words, that means I was able to copy all five seasons of The Wire — that’s 27GB of DVD quality — in under two minutes. Yeah.
Tragic Flaw
The Little Big Disk needs a boxy external power supply, which really kicks mobility in the balls.
This Is Weird…
SSD drives are supposed to be silent, but the Little Big Disk makes a faint (though audible!) clicking sound due to a small cooling fan inside.
Test Notes
If you’re considering buying the Little Big Disk, make sure you’re absolutely certain about this: it’s not as fast as LaCie says. The company boasts “shocking speeds up to 10Gb/s”. That’s straight up wrong. Thunderbolt may be capable of that kind of speed, but this SSD sure isn’t. If you can ignore LaCie’s misleading marketing, you’re still getting an extremely fast drive — compare speeds between it and my old USB 2.0 external.
Should You Buy It?
If you have the cash, the Little Big Disk will change the way you back up forever. As in, you might actually start doing it.
LaCie Little Big Disk
• Dimensions: 4cm x 14cm x 8cm
• Weight: 0.6kg
• Input: Thunderbolt
• Capacity: 240GB SSD
• Price: $US900
[LaCie]
TSH
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 12:01 PM240GB would hold …. maybe half of my music? FLAC compression ratios aren’t that good.
However, my really essential stuff (read: weird, rare pr0n and eTax files) would probably fit in that space.
Sigh
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 12:09 PMRemember people, that 10Gb/s with a lowercase ‘b’ is giga bits, not gigabytes, so divide by 8 to get gigabytes/s. So around 1.2GB/s which would indicate that they have probably raid 0 over 2x128gb drives
Tony
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 12:39 PMThis comment has been deemed inappropriate and has been deleted.
Tony
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 12:49 PMThat’s pathetic. Stop using the news to market failed products.
$900 for 240Gb?
$100 will get you 2TB, thats 8 times as much storage space 9 times cheaper, making this ‘deal’ 72 times worse than the current standard.
Ok so it’s a tiny bit faster at transferring, maybe even twice as fast.. who gives a fuck about that compared storage space excluding media studios who can’t live with less than 2TB per drive?
To put that in perspective for the less tech-savy victims of such marketing schemes: It’s like paying $27 for a mini-mini-mini cheeseburger because you’ll get it faster than the normal one.
Nobody cares about that kind of difference in time when the actual product isn’t worth anyone’s time.
Mick
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 1:29 PMI could introduce you to quite a few people that would care about that kind of difference in time, most of them are videographers who are moving data around like it’s going out of fashion. Mind, the decreased capacity would put a downer on things though.
Rhys
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 1:33 PMYou may not have use for it, and I don’t have use for it, but its pretty good if you want to edit video and move it quickly. That’s an audience. It’s not something aimed at the those who are not tech savvy, its aimed at those who have a use for this sort of speed with the added benefit of some portability…
Now back to your self centered views….
cal
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 1:17 PMnot to mention the hardware fail rate from Lacie. Hope they ship this with a spare power supply :P
Incredibad
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 1:35 PMLol 240GB. What is this, 2002?
Darren P
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 7:34 PMI don’t get it, $900 for 240GB, why not get the Pegasus R4 for $999 with 8TB. I bought the Pegasus R6 as its as close to future proof as you can get in the tech industry. 10TB of redundant storage that read/writes at 600MB/sec for about $2k
DR_Colossus
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 9:00 PMKeep in mind that SSDs have other advantages. They’re much more shock resistant than hard drives. Right now, they don’t compete directly with hard drives. They are a slightly different product. They can actually work really well side by side in a PC.
Jakus
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 11:46 PMTony really misses the point huh … This thing is not “maybe even twice as fast” … it is massively faster. Try moving 27 GB of data around a few times a day with a usb hard drive and see how sick of it you get … I have to do it all the time and it takes a hell of a lot longer than a couple of minutes with USB HDD’s
I have never understood the pathological hatred some people always seem to express against SSD’s … After I bought my first one I was an instant convert. I wish all my drives were SSD’s but as the others here know, they fill different roles right now.
MotorMouth
Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 9:10 AMWhat is it with Apple fanbois and LaCie? I’ve used a few of their external drives over the years and they are nothing at all special. Maybe the synergy is in the fact they are too expensive for what they are? I bought a USB 3.0 enclosure and put an old 64Gb SSD into it and now I get insane transfer speeds for $22. OK, if I’d had to buy an SSD it might have cost $170 or so for 128Gb. Still, that’s $340 for the same capacity as this thing and most of the speed.