LaCie's 2big Thunderbolt 2 and Rugged Thunderbolt DAS Review

Miscellaneous Aspects - RAID Rebuild and Daisy Chaining

While the Rugged Thunderbolt version had to be checked for TRIM support, the 2big Thunderbolt 2 had to be subjected to a RAID rebuild. Since the unit also uses an external power adapter, power consumption is also of interest. The LED behind the blue button on the front side of the unit serves as an indicator of the RAID status (amongst other things). The LaCie Desktop Manager also provides insights into the health of the array. We simulated drive loss by pulling out one of the disks during data transfer (the array was obviously configured in RAID 1). The hardware LED status immediately began flashing red. The monitoring program also reflected the degradation. Inserting the disk into a PC's SATA slot surprisingly showed the data preserved on the removed drive. This was a surprise, as we usually find disks subject to hardware RAID not being data-recovery-friendly in nature. The various aspects are covered in the gallery below.

After formatting the drive and putting it back in the 2big Thunderbolt 2's drive bay, RAID rebuild automatically started. Even though the Desktop Manager program doesn't display the progress of the rebuild, it does indicate whether the process is completed or not. The LED in the front panel also stops flashing red and blue after the rebuild is done.

We tracked various power consumption numbers (including the average power consumed during our robocopy tests - noted as 'benchmark mode' below). The collected data, as well as the inferred RAID rebuild duration (tracked by monitoring the power consumed at the wall) are presented in the table below.

The 2big unit carries two Thunderbolt 2 ports in order to enable daisy chaining. The 20 Gbps bandwidth is quite helpful when one wants to maintain bandwidth while daisy-chaining a display (or another Thunderbolt peripheral). In order to test out the daisy chaining aspect, we just connected the Rugged Thunderbolt to the spare Thunderbolt 2 port on the 2big unit. We repeated our first performance benchmarks set in this configuration by evaluating data transfer between the two units (with the 2big Thunderbolt 2 in RAID 0).

Given that the Rugged's Thunderbolt cable is permanently attached to the unit, the accessibility factor also plays an important role in this common use-case - data transfer can be achieved at Thunderbolt speeds between the on-field unit and the desktop unit meant for the processing workflow without hunting around on the server / workstation for a physical Thunderbolt port.