LaCie announces the 5big Thunderbolt RAID with up to 20TB

LaCie 5big
LaCie, le freak

LaCie announced a massive five-bay RAID with up to 20TB capacity, and the company is appropriately calling it the 5big Thunderbolt.

There is a 20TB and 10TB version of this massive storage solution, and both have speeds up to 785MB per second via its five 7200rpm/64MB cache hard disks preconfigured at RAID 0.

Video professionals doing post-production work are the target of this latest Thunderbolt product from LaCie, which is touting the 5big as perfect blend of capacity and performance.

To that point, the 5big Thunderbolt is able to edit multiple 2K uncompressed 10-bit streams.

The RAID you want

The 5big system allows for custom-made RAID configurations. Users can create a lightning-fast volume with three disks in RAID 0 and a safe volume with two disks in RAID 1.

Additionally, because its disks are hot-swappable, the 5big Thunderbolt allows users to slide a new disk into the safe volume without switching off the device.

Just as convenient is the fact that users can use fast volume in conjunction with Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere and Aperture.

LaCie's massive storage solution also features dual Thunderbolt ports, and users can daisy chain up to six Thunderbolt peripherals together.

The backup you need

LaCie designed the 5big as a backup solution with managers in mind thanks to the ability to use it as a JBOD array.

"With five working days a week," said LaCie is a press release, "an IT manager can assign each disk to a daily backup."

Everything stored on this top-tier RAID solution should be in safe hands thanks to its dual cooling system. LaCie packed in a heat-dissipating aluminum casing, a Noctua cooling fan and jumbo heat exhausts.

Both the 10TB and 20TB manage to do all of this while being "ultra quiet," according to LaCie.

LaCie price and availability

The LaCie 5big is currently available to archive everything that users own digitally for the starting price of US$1,199.00.

Even if that seems expensive, LaCie is quick to point out in the next breath that the "Thunderbolt cable is included."

Matt Swider