LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD)

The LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) ($999 list) is the latest version of the aluminum-clad thoroughbred series of external solid-state drives (SSDs), keeping a single user's data easily accessible at a moment's notice. With its Thunderbolt interface, it's one of the fastest drives we've ever tested, even rivaling a multi-mechanism RAID array costing twice as much. For the deadline-driven user that needed her job done yesterday, the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) is the Editor's Choice external drive to buy now.

Design and Features
Like the previous LaCie's Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (240GB SSD) ($899.99 list, 4 stars) , the 1TB SSD version of the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt is a pair of SSD drives installed into a 1.6-by-3.3-by-5.5-inch (HWD) chassis. All the drives in the Little Big Disk line (including the LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra ($450 list, 3.5 stars)) use the same chassis. The Little Big Disk chassis is constructed from aluminum, so the drive will survive the occasional drop in your commute bag. The sides are finned to help with passive cooling, so the tiny, single fan doesn't have to work too hard. That fan pumps out a bit of high-pitched noise, but thankfully the included Thunderbolt cable is long enough that you can put the drive behind your screen or into some other hidey hole. You can install the optional table stand for desktop use, but the drive works equally well without the stand. LaCie designed the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt to be a compact companion to Apple's line of MacBook Pro laptops, as well as Apple's desktop models.

The drive enclosure has two 512GB SATA III SSDs installed, giving you 1TB of combined storage space in RAID 0 (striping) configuration. The drive is set for RAID 0 out of the box. You can set the drive for RAID 1 (mirroring) using OS X's Disk Utility. RAID 1 will copy data to both SSDs simultaneously, giving you an instant backup at the expense of 500GB capacity. The included Thunderbolt cable (a $49 value) lets you plug the drive into any new Mac.

The drive has two Thunderbolt ports on the back (along with the jack for the AC adapter), so you can daisy chain several drives between your Mac and a Thunderbolt Display (or one with Mini DisplayPort). Unfortunately, like the other Little Big Disk drives, the 1TB SSD version is meant to be used on AC power: you can't power the drive solely from the Thunderbolt port, like the Editor's Choice for rugged portable drives, the LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt (120GB SSD) ($299.99 list, 4.5 stars).

Since you can administer the RAID settings and erase the drive from OS X's Disk Utility, and since the drive is Time Machine compatible out of the box, the drive doesn't need any extra utilites. LaCie still includes a CD with LaCie Backup Assistant and the drive's documentation, plus you can download these files from www.lacie.com if you don't have an optical drive. The drive comes formatted for HFS+ (OS X native), but you can of course reformat the drive exFAT (an extension of FAT that supports 4GB+ files and is both Mac and PC compatible) or NTFS for PCs, provided your PC has a Thunderbolt port. The LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) comes with a three-year warranty.

Performance
The LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) is a speed demon. There, I've said it. The drive is capable of pushing 620MB/sec read, 380MB/sec write over the Thunderbolt cable, according to our AJA System Test. LaCie says it is capable of even faster performance with more drives daisy chained together. To put this into perspective, the Promise Pegasus R6 ($1,999 list, 3.5 stars) with six spinning hard drives costs twice as much, but manages a competitive 480MBps read, 620 MBps write score. This is astonishing, considering the price tags.

Generally, spinning drives are quicker to write to, but SSDs are quicker to read from. This is seen in the LaCie Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series' Thunderbolt scores (379MBps read, 200MBps write using a single SSD) and the Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo (Thunderbolt) (374MBps read, 343MBps write using two 10,000rpm spinning hard drives). The Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) took only six seconds to copy our standard 1.2GB test folder, the same as the Pegasus R6. All the other drives took as much as three times as long under Thunderbolt.

If you're looking for a semi-portable, semi-rugged drive for your Thunderbolt-equipped Mac or PC, the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) should be at the top of the list (if you can afford it). Users who need to read multiple huge files (like HD videos) will want the Little Big Disk for its capacity and blazing read speeds. Since it's SSD-based storage, you won't have to worry about drive mechanisms wearing out, so it's a perfect drive to hold scientific or graphic libraries that your programs or websites need every second of every day. It'll also make a great work drive, holding both scratch files and the time-sensitive data files (media, graphics, video, database, etc.) you're working on right now. Our last Editors' Choice external hard drive, the IoSafe Solo G3 (1 TB) ($299 direct) won because of its innovative protection scheme and literally bullet-proof chassis. While we don't expect that the Little Big Disk will survive a bullet or fire, it is more rugged than plastic-clad drives, and the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt is one of the fastest drives we've ever tested. For users who need their job done minutes ago, the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) is the one you want.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt (1TB SSD) with several other hard drive side by side.

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