Thunderbolt strikes LaCie anew, this time 2big

LaCie announces at CES 2012 a new version of its 2big external hard drive that offers Thunderbolt connections.

Dong Ngo SF Labs Manager, Editor / Reviews

CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.

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Dong Ngo

Jan. 8, 2012 4:37 p.m. PT

2 min read

LaCie's Thunderbolt family of external hard drives now includes both the Little Big Disk and the LaCie 2big. LaCie

LAS VEGAS--If LaCie's Little Big Disk Thunderbolt is, well, too little for you, get ready for this!

LaCie announced today at CES 2012 that its new LaCie 2big external hard drive now features a Thunderbolt connection. Originally, the 2big series only offered USB 2.0, FireWire, and eSATA for Macs. There's also a version that offers USB 3.0, which is geared toward Windows users.

The LaCe 2big (front and back in the photo) comes with two internal hard drives and support RAID 1 and RAID 0. — The LaCe 2big (front and back in the photo) comes with two internal hard drives and supports RAID 1 and RAID 0. LaCie

The fact that the LaCie 2big features dual-volume, allowing for RAID 1 and RAID 0, means that Mac users now have another option, other than the Promise Pegasus, to have a fast external storage device that also offers data security. LaCie's other Thunderbolt drive, the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt, only comes with a single internal drive, hence it's susceptible to disk failure.

Similar to the Little Big Disk Thunderbolt, the new Thunderbolt-based LaCie 2big comes with two Thunderbolt ports for daisy purposes and supports no other connection types. This means it only works with Thunderbolt-enabled computers.

LaCie says the new Thunderbolt LaCie 2big drive will offer speeds up to three times faster than FireWire 800, its internal drives are hot-swappable, and its casing is made of solid aluminum. The drive offers up to 8TB of storage space in RAID 0 (or 4TB in RAID 1), and when two or more of the drives are daisy-chained together, performance will be increased.

The new Thunderbolt-based LaCie 2big is slated to be available in the first quarter of 2012 with pricing to be announced then. One thing you can know now, however: it will not include a Thunderbolt cable, which you'll need to purchase separately from Apple for $50.