LaCie 2big Thunderbolt review: LaCie 2big Thunderbolt

7.4

LaCie 2big Thunderbolt

$60 at Amazon

The Good

The easy-to-use, high-capacity <b>LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series</b> offers very fast performance for a dual-bay external hard drive. The drive supports RAID configurations, has a user-serviceable hard-drive bay design, and can be daisy-chained with up to five other Thunderbolt devices without decreasing the throughput.

The Bad

The LaCie 2big Thunderbolt's performance is comparatively slow for a Thunderbolt storage device, especially in RAID 1. The drive is relatively expensive; it doesn't have built-in support for any other common peripheral connections like USB or FireWire; and it doesn't come with the necessary Thunderbolt cable.

The Bottom Line

The LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series strikes a balance between capacity, performance, and price and would be a good choice for owners of Thunderbolt-enabled computers.

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LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series

The LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series is like the other hard drives in the 2big family, such as the 2big USB 3.0, with just one difference: it uses the new Thunderbolt connection and no other connection types, meaning it forgoes USB, FireWire, and eSATA. And this is a big difference.

This is the fastest dual-bay external hard drive I've seen, even though it's noticeably slower than other Thunderbolt devices, such as the LaCie Little Big Disk SSD and the Promise Pegasus R6. To make up for not being the fastest, the 2big Thunderbolt Series, though in no way cheap, costs significantly less than its competitors at $650 for the 4TB version and $800 for the 6TB. (Like with other Thunderbolt drives, you'll have to spend another $50 for a Thunderbolt cable, which is not included.)

That said, the LaCie 2big Thunderbolt is a good choice if you need a storage product that supports Thunderbolt and don't want to spend too much on something that's overkill for your needs.