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• LaCie’s Little Big Disk Quadra is a controversial product. First of all, we have to point out the price of $599.99, which deserves being called “excessive” in the light of current hard drive prices, which have reached $100 for a 500 GB 2.5” mobile unit. That heavy price will get you the Little Big Disk Quadra, which comes in an enclosure that was designed by Neil Poulton. You get eSATA, USB 2.0, and both types of FireWire interfaces, as well as the option to run the device powered by the FireWire interface. Unfortunately, neither eSATA nor USB 2.0 can do this—USB 2.0 can’t supply sufficient power, and power over eSATA has not been specified. LaCie adds a small power supply for USB and eSATA users, though, and you’d need an external supply for any other storage device that offers 1 TB of storage as well. Terabyte Capacity Thanks to RAID 0 The terabyte capacity can be achieved by operating the two drives in RAID 0 striping mode, which results in considerably increased read and write throughput when compared to a single hard drive. The result is convincing: almost 100 MB/s of read and write throughput, and a minimum of at least 70 MB/s is not bad, although solid RAID 0 setups using two modern 2.5” drives could probably yield even better throughput. Using FireWire 800 will give you more than 65 MB/s read and 51 MB/s constant write throughput, while USB 2.0 is limited to 33 MB/s reads and 27 MB/s writes. We found that the device supports only RAID 0; a secure RAID 1 array cannot be configured. Impressive Build Quality and Power Consumption The aluminum case, with its hard drives built in, is certainly a heavyweight at 645 g (1.4 lbs), but again, we have to compare that to other 1 TB 3.5” solutions, which won’t be lighter. And the enclosure is amazingly well built and makes a solid impression. The rear side includes all of the interfaces, such as eSATA, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0, while the front holds the huge, blue status LED and backup button. We also liked the power consumption figures: a 4 W idle power requirement and peak power consumption of 7 W is really amazing, considering that it is necessary to power two 2.5” hard drives, the RAID logic and the power supply. Unfortunately, LaCie did not include a physical power switch, which forces users to disconnect the power supply if they want to completely shut down the Little Big Disk. LaCie Software LaCie bundles a backup solution with its product, which is nice, but does not particularly add value. It is essentially a copy utility that creates new backups by creating a new folder. Folders are named by the name of the backup paired with an index, and backups are always complete—it’s not possible to make incremental backups, nor to schedule them. The only option is an automated execution of the backup tool at the time Windows starts, which will automatically trigger a backup run.

• Apogee is Walton Chaintech’s brand for memory modules, and it is now also used for flash SSDs. The Apogee SSDs are available at 32, 64 and 128 GB capacity points, and are based on either MLC or SLC flash memory. We received a 64 GB 2.5” MLC model, which is the reason for the poor write performance. We measured up to 111 MB/s on reads, but as little as 27 MB/s on writes—that’s only a fraction of the 149 to 89 MB/s promised on the Walton Chaintech website, and it’s even less than what USB 2.0 can support. Chaintech says that the SLC versions are faster, stating 163 MB/s for reads and up to 142 MB/s for writes. We are skeptical, upon looking at the results for our MLC-based sample. However, the 0.68 W to 1.8 W power consumption is very acceptable, and the drive comes with a second interface: you can also connect it via USB 2.0. This is the main reason why we included it in this little roundup, as it can either be used as a system drive, or as a portable storage device. Thanks to its low power consumption, the device runs on USB power. Its weight of 86 g is approximately 15% less than what a conventional 2.5” hard drive would weigh. USB 2.0 Performance SATA or USB 2.0: The Mini USB port lets you hook up this drive to a plethora of possible hosts. All you need is a suitable Mini USB to USB cable (which isn’t included with the drive). We looked at the Apogee SSD as a multi-purpose flash SSD, rather than as a drive that would serve as a system drive. For example, you could use it in a hot swap bay as a fast drive for your personal files on your PC. In this case, you would, of course, utilize the fast SATA interface, which provides up to 111 MB/s of throughput, as mentioned above. Whenever you need to travel, you could remove the drive, and hook it up to your notebook or other PCs using the USB interface. We talk about the Apogee's SATA performance in our most recent flash SSD roundup and focus on the USB performance here. The drive reads at approximately 30 MB/s, which is what we’d expect, but it only writes at approximately 15 MB/s when using USB 2.0. Flash-based SSDs can definitely do much better than this. Walton Chaintech ships the Apogee Flash SSD SATA II in this nice black box. The bottom side holds the product label.

• Portable Storage Carried to Excess

  We receive lots of different storage products for review. Regardless of whether or not we like the different concepts, ideas, and solutions these products represent, we typically find that most of them make sense in some way—unless they fail utterly at performance, reliability, or providing decent bang for the buck. This time we looked at three storage products that are a bit different from what you’ll typically find at your local retailer. Buffalo offers all-flash portable storage, Chaintech sells a flash SSD that comes with an additional USB port, and LaCie sent us a state-of-the-art RAID product based on two 2.5” drives. LaCie: Fast and Mobile Storage LaCie is a popular storage vendor that is known for well designed, high-performance storage solutions for enthusiasts at the high end, or for small business users. The Little Big Disk Quadra is, despite its oxymoronic name, that type of an elite drive. It consists of two 500 GB 2.5” mobile hard drives inside a stylish and solid enclosure. It offers all popular interface types, and RAID technology to maximize performance. If you really need to combine high capacity and high performance with mobility, then this could be your product. Buffalo, Chaintech: More Flash, Just Different The flash market, especially the flash SSD segment, is changing so quickly that it is very difficult for smaller companies to keep pace. They are constantly working to release attractive products at acceptable prices before someone else releases the next product generation—which can sometimes offer double the performance and capacity at the same price points. Because of this issue, Buffalo and Chaintech provide products for very specific niches that are less sensitive to product cycles. Buffalo believes that there is room for 1.8” storage products that are entirely based on flash memory. We tend to disagree at capacities of up to 64 GB—where you can get USB thumb drives—but in the range of 128 GB and more, this looks like a market segment to address. Chaintech believes that flash SSDs should not be limited to the SATA interface, and designed a 2.5” flash SSD, which comes both with SATA/300 and USB 2.0 interfaces. Let’s look at some details.