SSDs, or solid state drives, are not just fast; they’re significantly faster than standard mechanical hard drives, typically boasting data transfer rates that top out at roughly 500MBps for both reading and writing on average. However, LaCie is making a pretty bold claim about their new high-end portable solid state drive, saying it’s the fastest portable hard drive in the world.
Dubbed the Little Big Disk, LaCie’s 1TB SSD can supposedly transfer data at an apparently record-setting 1.375GBps. LaCie also claims that their new drive writes data at an incredible 1,180MB/s. The drive must be plugged into Thunderbolt 2 ports to achieve these speeds though.
The LaCie Little Big Disk houses a pair of 500GB PCI-E Gen 2 SSDs configured in RAID 0, but they can be put in RAID 1 or JBOD as well. A pair of aluminum plates absorb heat, while a fan cools the internals. To keep the decibel level down, the fan only turns on when the drive heats up.
Having a drive that pushes data this fast doesn’t come cheaply, though: The Little Big Disk is available now for a whopping $1,299, which is about the price of an entry-level MacBook Pro these days.
If you work with big chunks of data and have the kind of coin to spring for the Little Big Disk, perhaps you should give it a look, especially if you regularly edit 4K video and super high-res images. You can pick up a Little Big Disk from the official LaCie website.