LaCie previews Thunderbolt-driven Little Big Disk

Posted on 24 Jun 2011 at 09:54, by Gareth Halfacree

Storage specialist LaCie has announced its latest external hard drive, the Little Big Disk, which packs Thunderbolt technology for a promised 10Gb/s transfer rate.

Building on the company's Little Disk by Sam Hecht - which was a poor performer when reviewed back in 2008 - the Little Big Disk swaps the single drive of its predecessor for a pair of disks linked in RAID 0, theoretically boosting speed while increasing storage capacities.

Featuring an aluminium body designed by Neil Poulton, the drive will be available with either 240GB or 500GB of solid-state storage - required to get the most out of the 10Gb/s Thunderbolt connectivity - or a 1TB 7,200rpm mechanical hard drive.

Interestingly, the company has opted to make the drive available as a Thunderbolt-only device: featuring two ports and the ability to daisy chain up to six devices in total, the LaCie Little Big Disk is only compatible with systems equipped with a Thunderbolt port - meaning, at the moment, the latest Mac models from Apple.

Pricing has not yet been made available, but with LaCie aiming the Little Big Disk firmly at professionals it's likely to fetch a significant premium over USB 3.0-based external storage devices.