I second that. My thoughts exactly. The cable fits tight enough that it will not move unless you literally take it out yourself.
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Booting Thunderbolt iMac from LaCie Rugged SSD
- Thread starter shelt
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I second that. My thoughts exactly. The cable fits tight enough that it will not move unless you literally take it out yourself.
Has any of you tried fusing the internal 1TB/3TB HDD with the external Thunderbolt/USB3 Lacie/Seagate SSD ? That would be interesting...
It probably isn't a good idea to build a Fusion drive with an internal and an external drive due to the possibility of the interface cable being unplugged and wreaking havoc on the tightly integrated drives making up the logical Fusion drive. Apple officially says you can't do that ... and they may actually try to prevent it with the "Disk Utility" repair/rebuild technology. However, I recall that some here have created DIY Fusion drives in that manner while admitting it probably isn't reliable.
I have built entirely external Fusion drives using a multi-drive Thunderbolt enclosure (LaCie Little Big Disk and Pegasus J4) and they work fine. The drives "fused" together are both inside the same enclosure so there isn't the risk of them being separated while in operation.
I have done that and so far no problems. If I try to boot with the external portion of the FusionDrive array powered off, my iMac just sits there. As soon as I turn it on, the drive spins up and immediately boots. Likewise if I turn off the external drive after being booted - it just sits there. As soon as I turn it in, it goes back to operating. I do not see any real difference in having both drives in the same enclosure. If the enclosure is off line, nothing happens.
I don't see them any more "tightly integrated" than a Raid 0 array, relying on Core Storage to keep track of where each block of data resides on which drive and in what sector, and then optimizing that location over time. The smallest unit of storage is still a block, and if both drives aren't available, nothing happens.
Thanks for providing feedback that it is working for you. Did you create the Fusion with "terminal" or using the new "Disk Utility"? If the latter, does it complain about having internal and external disks as part of the Fusion array?
It is the movement of data between the drives which concerns me in the case of a disconnect, which RAID-0 doesn't do. However, RAID-0 does cause problems if one of the drives has a brief dropout (similar to a disconnect I suppose) which will cause the RAID array to drop off-line completely. This is more pronounced as more drives are added to the RAID-0 array ... you generally want to use high quality "enterprise rated" disks. Using "green disks" are almost guaranteed to cause problems with striped RAID arrays.
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It shouldn't be any different than any other disk drive suffering a power outage ... it depends on what it is doing when the power drops. If it is "idle", you will probably be able to restart and all will be well ... otherwise
Another thing slightly off topic though... Can we really boot from USB from the LaCie or any other USB3 case ?
I can boot from my USB 3.0 Porsche and Rugged LaCie drives. Just need to be sure the partition scheme is GPT or Apple, and you have a valid OS X system installed on the drive.
Depends on which OS you boot from
OS X - Anything will be fine. USB, FW, TB, etc.
Windows 7 - only Thunderbolt will do.
Windows 8 - can from USB, but some tricks needed.
I'm looking into options for a 2011 iMAC as well, in terms of Lacie SSD vs Seagate+another.
Which Seagate TB dock is everyone getting, and are their concerns with the drive coming lose in the enclosure during operation?
I see a lot of raw speedtests but what about small files/IOPS/ running apps? How much is lost using thunderbolt in terms of IOPS?
Which Seagate TB dock is everyone getting, and are their concerns with the drive coming lose in the enclosure during operation?
I see a lot of raw speedtests but what about small files/IOPS/ running apps? How much is lost using thunderbolt in terms of IOPS?
i have an imac with only one thunderbolt any way to use Lacie rugged orange SSD and my secondary monitor?
Hi all, I've got the 840 Pro too and am looking at getting the Seagate Thunderbolt adapter (Bus powered, not desktop).
This thread's pretty much covered all my initial questions so far except for:
1) is there any difference between the Seagate GoFlex and BackupPlus versions (ok BackupPlus version is newer, maybe has a new paint job, and I can only seem to find it available in US, not here in EU, but what about more important things like chipsets and firmware, resulting speeds etc?)
2) this might be pie-in-the-sky thinking, but since I'm going to be using it as the boot drive for my MBP I'd like it to be portable, hence going with the bus powered version. Problem is, when I get home and want to switch to the thunderbolt display it's not so simple to just yank it out and plug it into the daisy-chain port on the display. is there any way to achieve this without a full-blow shutdown-plugswitch-restart routine (admittedly not a huge amount of time with an ssd). I take it this would be deemed an 'illegal move' when the MBP is sleeping, if so is there a way to ask OSX to temporarily suspend the boot drive and tell it that it will re-appear soon?
cheers
This thread's pretty much covered all my initial questions so far except for:
1) is there any difference between the Seagate GoFlex and BackupPlus versions (ok BackupPlus version is newer, maybe has a new paint job, and I can only seem to find it available in US, not here in EU, but what about more important things like chipsets and firmware, resulting speeds etc?)
2) this might be pie-in-the-sky thinking, but since I'm going to be using it as the boot drive for my MBP I'd like it to be portable, hence going with the bus powered version. Problem is, when I get home and want to switch to the thunderbolt display it's not so simple to just yank it out and plug it into the daisy-chain port on the display. is there any way to achieve this without a full-blow shutdown-plugswitch-restart routine (admittedly not a huge amount of time with an ssd). I take it this would be deemed an 'illegal move' when the MBP is sleeping, if so is there a way to ask OSX to temporarily suspend the boot drive and tell it that it will re-appear soon?
cheers
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I just got the LaCie Rugged 128 and got it hooked to my 2011 27" iMac via Thunderbolt. While the drive runs fast (boot time went from 60 sec to 15 sec) and there are no sleep issues, system report registers the SSD as a SanDisk U100 (not Crucial as reported in this topic).
Could it be that LaCie switched to a different brand of SSD? I've read some really bad stuff about the SanDisk U100 - most about the random write performance. I don't notice anything specific and everything runs much faster than my internal WD drive, but still.... I bought LaCie based on some good reviews to use as a boot drive. Sure, it's not the fastest SSD out there, but really good for the price.
However, if LaCie switched from Crucial to Sandisk U100 - it is quite possible that these reviews are not applicable. People go so far as to compare the U100 with mechanical drive speeds.
I do not notice it - the system is faster, Blackmagic shows scores of 290/380 (although I'm not sure if Blackmagic measures random writes/reads)
Just thought I'd give a heads up to everyone. Not sure about the U100 performance and, again, no issues here - much faster than the 7200rpm drive, but worth mentioning.
Could it be that LaCie switched to a different brand of SSD? I've read some really bad stuff about the SanDisk U100 - most about the random write performance. I don't notice anything specific and everything runs much faster than my internal WD drive, but still.... I bought LaCie based on some good reviews to use as a boot drive. Sure, it's not the fastest SSD out there, but really good for the price.
However, if LaCie switched from Crucial to Sandisk U100 - it is quite possible that these reviews are not applicable. People go so far as to compare the U100 with mechanical drive speeds.
I do not notice it - the system is faster, Blackmagic shows scores of 290/380 (although I'm not sure if Blackmagic measures random writes/reads)
Just thought I'd give a heads up to everyone. Not sure about the U100 performance and, again, no issues here - much faster than the 7200rpm drive, but worth mentioning.
The internal drives installed in our products do very. We buy drives that meet our standards and have good availability and price point. I'm pleased to hear the drive is performing well for you. ~TE
There is not. You would either need 2 Thunderbolt ports on the iMac or on the Drive. Here is an example of a LaCie drive the would work for you and support the additional monitor.
http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?id=10549
Thank you for your reply. While I agree the disk runs faster than a mechanical drive (which is expected) the small file performance (4K speeds) is much lower than on some other SSDs you use for the same model. This does affect performance. While I don't mind much, it is something of a lottery when you buy products like this, as you can't tell which drive is inside until you buy it.
Still, I'm happy with my drive. I just find it a bit unfair to pay the same as everyone else and get noticeably lower small file performance compared to the same product (but with different drive inside) - especially when we know this kind of performance, and not the maximum read speeds, defines the speed of an SSD.
Other than that, the drive works great and looks really nice and it has improved the performance of my iMac. I can only hope the performance is not much lower overall than the Rugged drives with better SSDs inside.
To add my 2 cents...I just bought a LaCie Rugged 256 GB drive and it also has the SanDisk SSD.
It's faster than my external hard drive (of course) but fully expected to at least get a Micron SSD or a state of the art SSD inside. LaCie harms it's name among enthusiasts by putting in what's available or just fast enough.
Some of us want more than an average or even less than average SSD in 2013.
It's faster than my external hard drive (of course) but fully expected to at least get a Micron SSD or a state of the art SSD inside. LaCie harms it's name among enthusiasts by putting in what's available or just fast enough.
Some of us want more than an average or even less than average SSD in 2013.
I have the 128 rugged lacie via Thunderbolt as a boot drive for OSx only. Using the internal hdd on my 27" iMac for storage of the user folders and this setup works like a charm. Boot is very quick, on average 10 seconds with apps being opened automatically. Hibernation works like a charm.
Speeds are average for an SSD, my old samsung 830 60GB is quicker (with windows 7), but the difference is only marginal.
Only thing I'm wondering is upgrading the Sandisk U100 drive to a 840 pro worth it and can you use the lacie enclosure without any issues
Speeds are average for an SSD, my old samsung 830 60GB is quicker (with windows 7), but the difference is only marginal.
Only thing I'm wondering is upgrading the Sandisk U100 drive to a 840 pro worth it and can you use the lacie enclosure without any issues
Hi,
The enclosures are built to accept only the drives we ship with for the most part. They may work with non-approved disks but we can't guarantee it because we never qualified them. You're welcome to try anything you want of course, as long as you realize that changing internal parts may void the warranty on the disk - its likely to work though. We rarely see situations where an enclosure won't accept a similar drive. The only time I've seen disks not work at all is when their brand new and the enclosure is several years old.
~m