LaCie 2Big RAID solution waits for Apple to catch up with USB 3.0

USPR_2big$USB$30_Image_1 With USB 3.0 finally agreed upon, which allows for potential throughput of up to 4 gigabits per second, peripheral makers are slowly but surely dipping their toes into the waters of the new spec. Yesterday, LaCie announced that they were joining the fray with the world’s first USB 3.0 Dual-Drive RAID storage solution.

LaCie’s 2Big USB 3.0 is a dual-disc RAID 0/1 storage solution powered by Symwave’s dual SATA and RAID bridge controller. LaCite boasts that the 2Big will be capable of the highest throughput ever achieved in a USB 3.0 external storage product: it will even allow users to transfer high-definition uncompressed video at speeds up to 275MB per second, or prefer real time streaming and editing of multiple high-definition files at once.

That sounds like a great match for the Mac platform’s plethora of video professionals, but here’s the catch: there’s no support for USB 3.0 on any current Macs. Still, it’s pretty much a lock that you can expect at least one USB 3.0 port on Apple’s next Mac Pro refresh: USB 3.0 is exactly the sort of transfer standard that would appeal to the Mac Pro’s core audience of video professionals, especially considering Apple’s long-term effort to distance itself from Firewire.

If you’re interested in the LaCie 2Big RAID, you can luckily wait around for Apple to catch up with the USB 3.0 spec: both the 2Big and the Mac Pro refresh are due in the first quarter of 2010.

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John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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http://www.toxicspark.com Andrew Macdonald
May i ask why Apple is trying to distance itself from Firewire please?
http://Applebashing Gazoobee
LaCie makes crap. The fact that they made some USB crap ahead of Apple implementing it is meaningless. It’s still crap.
ged
I have memmorized the transfer speeds for USB 2.x so I know how much better USB 3 will be.
On a more serious note, each computer I have reacts differently to each portable storage device in terms of its transfer speed, so the numbers are only a rough guide at best.
BTW, Firewire 3200 already exists doesn’t it?
imajoebob
FW3200 will probably beat USB 3.0, based on USB 2.0 real throughput. But I haven’t seen anything with 3200 – barely anything with 800. Looking at the stuff available on USB 3.0, I think this will be a pig, especially on notebooks. I don’t care if you’re running an i7 processor, it’s going to suck the life out of your system to try for those speeds. I can’t begin to guess what it will do when you want to transfer data between two external drives. And then if they’re powered from the bus? [shudder]
If Apple is playing it smart, they’re holding back until USB 3.0 is released. Then they’ll start talking about FW6400(!). That’s all but completed, and is just a juiced FW3200. It will beat the snot out of the USB in both throughput and notebook battery life. Even just the 3200 will beat USB 3.0. Since it uses the FW800 connection, the basic hardware is ready to go. Imagine being able to dump a full movie onto your iPhone in a minute or so. Killer. But Apple fumbled FW400 and FW800 (they sold it out for a quick and dirty iPod video stream), so why would they do the smart thing with 32/6400?