LaCie 4big: The Enthusiast Data Jukebox

Test Setup, Access Time, Interface Bandwidth

Test Setup

Interface Bandwidth

LaCie says that the 4big Quadra reaches up to 230 MB/s throughput via eSATA. We selected a RAID 0 to check the throughput, but we could not see more than 175 MB/s. Although four 7,200 RPM drives can theoretically reach approximately 400 MB/s in an ideal RAID 0 environment, 175 MB/s is still a good result.

As you can see, the maximum throughput clearly depends on the interface. The 175 MB/s we mentioned can only be reached on eSATA. FireWire 800 reached 80 MB/s, which is one of the best results we’ve seen on this interface. 40 MB/s is typical for FireWire 400, as is 35 MB/s for USB 2.0.

Access Time

Access time depends on the RAID level you select: RAID 0 clearly is the fastest, providing a quick 13.9 ms average access across all four drives. RAID 5 takes as much as 18 ms for average access time, while a RAID 10 array or degraded RAID 5 array are slightly faster. These numbers, however, are only important if you intend to run applications off the 4big Quadra, which typically won’t be the case—this is a mass storage product.