Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD

[c.cloudwalker]

Anyone has experienced this drive? I'm interested in it so I'm looking for feedback if you have any to offer. Thanks

 

[Garbz]

Feedback for what? Surely not photography because I can't seen any application related to taking or processing pictures that requires two SSDs configured in RAID0 via a thunderbolt cable. Actually the entire idea of an external SSD smells more of "I can", rather than "I need".

What are you trying to achieve?

 

[Derrel]

LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt SSD review -- Engadget

Sounds as if it might be a wee bit noisy...seems uber-fast, for sure...if you have to move big chunks of data FAST, it would be a nice thing to have that kind of ridonculous speed....but $900...ouch...

 

[c.cloudwalker]

It will/would be used for photos that will be between 450 and 600mps.

I have no idea if I NEED that. Because I'm not much of a geek I'm waiting on a call back from a friend whose work is computers to see what he has to say about it all. Another friend who works with huge images sent me the link because I'm working on my own huge project.

D, I wish it was $900. Here it's more like $1300

 

[Derrel]

Good gosh...can it be ordered from the USA and shipped there for a reasonable fee, say $75 or so???

I dunno...my main external is a rather simple Buffalo TeraStation set up in a RAID 0 configuration....it's running on Firewire 800 connection,and is my fastest storage drive. I dunno about the sheer SPEED the new Thunderbolt cable makes possible when two SSD's are used...yes, it is a PITA to wait for files to write and to transfer...I can see the desire to have a drive as fast as this Little Big Drive when routinely transferring LARGE blocks of data. The key for me would be the "routinely" part of it...as the review from Endgadget showed, an 89 gigabyte transfer time was something like 38 minutes in RAID 0, 41 in RAID 1...that's a large amount of data to transfer...on smaller, more-normal amounts of data, like say a 4.35 gig DVD-R's worth of files, I just cannot see paying $900, let alone $1,300 for a few minutes' time savings. I like LaCie drives....have a couple still...the noise of the Little Big Drive is one thing that would bother me--I detest noisy drives...

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Yes, it could but then I would have to pay import taxes which would end up being the same or just about. But maybe I'll pick one up next time I'm back in the US. I've never had to open a suitcase for customs coming into France

And no, it would not be routine work for me since it is for a personal project. For the friend mentioned above, it is his daily work however.

This is just a part of a bigger project which may eventually get commercialized depending on how it works out and, in that case, I would be able to write off all the reasearch expenses

 

[Garbz]

It will/would be used for photos that will be between 450 and 600mps.

I have no idea if I NEED that.

Well what you don't need is the most expensive component of the lot. SSD's are still very expensive coming it at roughly $2/GB for good ones. They are a FAST technology but it's important to understand what kind of fast we're talking about. Because there's no mechanical movement, no aligning of heads on a spinning disc, the SSDs have a low seek time, in the order of 0.1-0.3ms. That's 2 orders of magnitude better than the 15ms seek time of a normal harddisk and it's exactly what you want for reading random small crap form all over the drive.

I've recently installed an SSD in my computer and it's the best thing since sliced bread ... For my windows drive and for a database server with many hits randomly across the database. This is the critical bit. The standard normal use of an operating systems means roughly 50% or so of your activity on the drive is random 4k block reads. If you use benchmarking utilities a standard spinning disk can achieve maybe 0.5 - 2MB/s (yes that slow) of random data reads across the drive. An SSD speeds this up to about 40-60MB/s.


On the other hand accessing a single large file like a big photo or a big disk is a contiguous read. Seek time suddenly doesn't come into the equation. While I just spent the last few min typing a raving review for my SSD, I managed to copy a few large contiguous files to my SSD at 120MB/s. I managed to do this because my spinning drives achieved that level of performance (RAID0).

Some typical numbers you'll see, HDD vs SSD:

Contiguous read: 65MB/s vs 120MB/s
Contiguous write: 50MB/s vs 50MB/s
Random 4k read/write: 1MB/s vs 50MB/s
Cost: $0.025/GB vs $2/GB

Also worth noting that it is the absolute worst time to buy harddisks of the spinning variety right now. 2 of the major manufacturers need to employ scuba divers at their factories thanks to wild weather so supply is restricted and the drives have more than doubled in cost in the last few months, it's expected to last another 6 months or so. Mind you that's still $0.05/GB vs $2/GB

My recommendation is if you want to go for speed on a reasonable budget look for an external drive with eSATA or Thunderbolt connections that houses 2 spinny drives in RAID0 (which doubles sequential performance but does nothing for random performance).

 

[c.cloudwalker]

OKKKKKKKKKKKKK

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what you just told me. I seem to understand I don't need that drive and I even seem to understand why but you kinda lost me with the scuba divers... lol.

I'm not on a budget!

Not only that but I wonder if you read the last post I made.

 

[Derrel]

Let me simplify,if I may. Not that I am Garbz, but what I think he meant was this: A SSD is a great device when information needs to be accessed from all over the disk, in random fashion, as when used in let's say, a HUGE database, where high-speed, random "seeks" are common, and speed is of the essence. When random, unpredictable, and high-volume requests for data are the norm, then a SSD makes a lot of sense. When random,high-volume, data reads and data writing operations are the normal function, then the SSD really truly comes into its own: think of the New York Stock Exchange's second-by-second data read and write needs...thousands and thousands of read and write operations, from A to Z, all over hell, in crazy, breakneck fashion, need to be noted and updated, in just seconds ALL THE TIME, as a matter of standard operating procedure...this is "random access", and it needs read, and write operations to be done. Very challenging for a traditional patter and head type disk.

However, when what a hard disk is doing is mostly "contiguous" work, relaying data that is pretty much grouped all together, as in "transferring this huge HD movie .avi file from the main drive to the storage drive", or transferring a single folder full of 400 megabyte, poster-sized,.TIF files, then the traditional "spinning disk" type hard drives are really not at that big of a disadvantage. As you can see, the contiguous "write" speeds are virtually identical.

 

[Garbz]

I'm not on a budget!

Not only that but I wonder if you read the last post I made.

I did read it. But a waste of money is still a waste of money even if the project costs could be recouped. Knowledge is free. Today you're buying something where cost is no object. Tomorrow you may not be so lucky, so if I'm going to type a fairly long post about performance I may as well mention cost too for your consideration .

Also my comment about the scuba divers was trying to put a humours spin on the fact that most of the major HDD manufacturers are located in in flood affected areas. Seagate have said it will take 6 months before they can ramp up production again due to the major flooding in the region. The cost has skyrocketed.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Thank you both with putting up with my non-geek brain. I've read and re-read your posts and think I get them. I will read them again before actually facing the partners in this potential venture. Said partners may actually tell me the same thing, we will see.

Thank you.