Fibre Channel DAS has been dethroned. Featuring Thunderbolt 2 speeds of up to 1330MB/s and 48TB in a 1U rackmount size, the LaCie 8big Rack has seized the crown. Video pros, meet the king of storage for 4K workflows.
Thunderbolt 2 Speeds for the 4K Era
With Thunderbolt 2 technology, the interface is no longer the performance bottleneck. For the 8big Rack, LaCie harnessed the breakthrough performance potential of the Thunderbolt 2 I/O, squeezing the absolute best speeds out of the hard disks. Add a hardware RAID controller and 7200RPM disks, and the result is incredible, sustained speeds of up to 1330MB/s that turbocharge 4K workflows, file transfers, or backups.
With this kind of speed, videographers can work directly from RAW files in Apple® Final Cut Pro® or Adobe® Premiere®, get maximum quality from footage, and see edits in real time. No need to first convert footage into a lower resolution. Avid® Pro Tools® users will notice incredibly smooth audio mixing, even when working with hundreds of tracks simultaneously. Professional photography agencies and other Adobe Lightroom® or Apple Aperture® users can browse through archived libraries of thousands of RAW and edited images, with zero lag.
Bulletproof Reliability
With full component redundancy, the LaCie 8big Rack gives professionals superb reliability and data security. Fans, disks, and PSU are fully redundant, hot swappable, and user-serviceable. And hardware RAID 5/6 provides security against disk failure and data loss, without compromising on transfer speeds. Whatever the contingency, zero data loss, and zero downtime.
The 8big Rack’s innovative cooling system prolongs component lifespan, featuring three efficient, thermoregulated cooling fans to drive airflow. A metal sheet beneath the disks dissipates heat, and cool air flows under the sheet to drain hot air away. Above and between the two rows of disks, air flows from front to back, conducting heat away from sensitive components.
The Most Powerful I/O, Reinvented
Thunderbolt technology redefined external storage with its speed and versatility for bandwidth-intensive applications. Thunderbolt 2 builds on those advances by doubling the speed potential to 20Gb/s and enabling simultaneous RAW 4K video editing and display. And thanks to support for DisplayPort 1.2, it’s now possible to daisy chain higher-resolution displays such as 4K monitors.
In addition to higher performances, the Thunderbolt 2 I/O offers dramatically simpler connections than Fibre Channel. Connect the LaCie 8big Rack to a computer via the Thunderbolt cable – no HBA (host bus adapter) necessary – and instantly the volume mounts on your OS. And unlike Fibre Channel, Thunderbolt 2 is truly a plug and play and single-vendor solution. No port mapping or multipathing is required to achieve this performance. Thunderbolt technology even supports optical cables, which means you could connect a LaCie 8big Rack to a computer located up to 60 meters (197 feet) away.
Note:
- The full product specifications below are from the manufacturer and may contain information related to other package quantities that will not apply to the product that you are reviewing. Please confirm the actual content and/or package quantity from the main product specifications page.
- These specifications may represent the entire product series/model/line to which this product belongs with specific configuration differences between the individual products stated.
- These specifications may have been copied from the same product in other region/country in which case there might be minor differences in region-specific data such as Input Voltage, Terms of Warranty etc.
Item Number : 9000598AS
Capacity : 48TB Enterprise Class
Internal Storage Media :
8 x 6TB Enterprise Class HDDs
8 hot-swappable* 7200RPM/64MB cache (or greater) hard disks with 1.2 million hours MTBF and 24x7 power-on operation
Purchase a spare hard disk | List of compatible bare hard disks
Interface : 2 x Thunderbolt™ 2 ports
Interface Transfer Rate : 20Gb/s
Performance Benchmark :
Reads | Writes (MB/s)**
48TB (8-disk) RAID 0: 1330 | 1060
48TB (8-disk) RAID 5: 1130 | 1020
Interface Technology : Bidirectional 20Gb/s permits a high-resolution display and RAW 4K video editing
Power-Saving Mode : Reduce power consumption by pressing the front button to spin down disks without disrupting daisy chain transfers (short press initiates power-saving mode; long press turns product off completely)
RAID Modes :
Preconfigured HFS+ RAID 5
Hardware RAID 0 / 1 / 5 / 6 / 10 / JBOD
Configure RAID using LaCie RAID Manager software
Daisy Chain : Connect up to six Thunderbolt-compatible devices – including Thunderbolt 2 and LaCie Thunderbolt Series products – to a computer via a single Thunderbolt cable***
Security :
AES 256-bit software encryption
Cable management arm
Cooling :
Redundant, hot-swappable fans
Aluminum front and all-metal enclosure
Efficient cooling for long-term reliability
Additional Features :
Tool-free component replacement
Cable-free fan, disk, and PSU connections
Two-step easy access to components
Front-facing status LEDs: disks, power, alarm
ID button: from front or back, user-friendly way to identify a product when many are installed in a rack
Alarm with mute button
System monitoring and email alerts for failure and warning events
Acoustic :
Idle: 50dB
Operating mode: 53dB
Operating max: 69dB▲
Power Supply : : 2x 100-240V; 50/60Hz; 250W
Dimensions (WxHxD) : : 477 x 44 x 772 mm | 18.9 x 1.7 x 30.4 in.
Weight : 20 kg | 44 lbs
System Requirements :
• Computer with a Thunderbolt 2 or Thunderbolt*** port
• Latest version of Windows® 7, Windows 8 (see here for drivers information) / Mac OS® X 10.9 or later
• Minimum free disk space: 600MB recommended
Software :
• Intego® Backup Manager Pro
• LaCie Private-Public (protect data with AES 256-bit encryption)
• LaCie RAID Manager (administration console)
Download product software at www.lacie.com/software/8bigracktb2
Box Content :
• LaCie 8big Rack
• 2x Internal power supplies
• Thunderbolt cable
• Rack mounting kit
• Hard disks
• Cable management arm kit
• Quick Install Guide
Comments :
* Hot swapping will result in data loss in a RAID 0 array.
** These transfer rates were achieved using AJA System Test when connected to a 13" Macbook Pro® with a 2.8GHz Intel® Core™ i7 processor and 8GB RAM. Actual data rates may vary depending on operating environment and other factors, such as RAID mode, RAID configuration, and disk capacity.
*** To achieve full interface bandwidth, connect the product to a Thunderbolt 2 port on a computer or device.
▲ These measurements have been made under normal conditions, one meter/three feet from the front of the product. This value may vary with conditions and product configuration.
When referring to drive capacity, one gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes and one terabyte, or TB, equals one thousand billion bytes. Your computer’s operating system may use a different standard of measurement and report a lower capacity. In addition, some of the listed capacity is used for formatting and other functions and will not be available for data storage.