Cheap?…Maybe

[David Bogie]

LaCie is the single most recommended, praised, hated and complained about drive mfr.
Take your pick.
Cheap does not imply causality.
I think there’s a LaCie forum here.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Dom Silverio]

They suck.

[Joachim Blunck]

Big Disk will handle DVCProHD, but certainly not Uncompressed HD.

Reliability is questionable — LaCie seems to go through quality cycles. Hard to say where they’re at now.

Four drives striped Raid0 in a sealed enclosure — if it crashes, you’re gone.

JB
Blue Smoke & Mirrors Ltd.
FCP Finishing
Xsan Integration
310-292-0416

[Shane Ross]

HD needs a high speed RAID. FW ain’t gonna cut it….UNLESS! Unless you are working with Panasonic DVCPRO HD…or (shiver) HDV (not really HD in my opinion).

All other flavors of HD require capture cards and high spped RAID arrays.

HD and cheap really can’t be used in the same sentence.

[Mitchji]

Hi,

The SeriTek SATA 4 port card and two dual drive enclosures are probably a better choice. There should be a review soon here:
https://www.barefeats.com/index.html
COMING REAL SOON NOW:
RE-REVIEW: FirmTek SeriTek/1VE4 SATA PCI-X host adapter and 1EN2 hot-swap enclosures

Best Wishes,

Mitch

[Walter Biscardi]

I am looking at the LaCie Big Disk the 1TB…Opinions…Advice…HD Workflow with it??? Some have said the LaCie box is cheap and wont do the HD Workflow correctly. Opinions Please…

Steve the LaCie’s I’ve run here for over a year are rock solid and will easily handle DVCPro HD. For true uncompressed HD, you’ll need a faster array such as a Medea FCR2X Fibrechannel. I’m supposed to be reviewing a LaCie SATA array in the near future so hopefully I’ll get some feedback on that soon.

But nothing wrong with the LaCie’s. As Mat notes in a second thread here, they sold something like a million units last year so you’ll hear more about them than any other drive manufacturer, good or bad, because they have so many products out there.

Their tech support folks are great and if you have a problem, they’ll get to the bottom of it.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Ed Dooley]

I’m assuming when you say 1T that you mean the Bigger Disk, not the Big Disk. The reason I want to clarify that is that when the Bigger Disk first came out, speed tests showed that it performed slower than the Big Disk. Even though a 4 drive raid normally performs faster than a 2 drive raid, having them all connected through one FW connection (channel) hindered performance. This may have since changed, but I just wanted to point it out.
Ed

[Oliver Peters]

I’ve had mixed experiences with the LaCies. The best results are with a separate FW card and two of the 500GB drives striped together with the card. When these are under 50% full, they seem to pass even 1080/23.98 DVDProHD without problems. I have had considerable problems with dropped frames under these conditions: a) close to full, 2) sharing FW devices on the bus, 3) working with 60P and 30i HD media, and 4) having a marginally performing LaCie in the chain. Supposedly the G-Tech drives have better performance, but I don’t have first hand knowledge.

Sincerely,
Oliver

Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Walter Biscardi]

The best results are with a separate FW card and two of the 500GB drives striped together with the card.

You had them striped together and both running off the single FW card? That will result in pretty slow performance vs. one drive connected to the Mac FW800 Port and the second connected to the FW card. You basically get two channel performance when you run one drive on the card and one on the Mac for much faster performance right through the capacity of the units. This is how my two 500GB units have been running for the past year both on my G5 and the G4.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Ed Dooley]

The fastest performance is as Walter said, but if you can’t use the built in FW buss because you have something connected to it (like an AJA IO or certain camcorders or decks), and you don’t have a 2nd FW card installed, then Oliver’s suggestion is faster (if only slightly) than 2 drives on a single FW cable. Oliver also alluded to the G-Raids maybe being faster than LaCies. G-Raids read/write from the inner track of one drive while reading/writing the outer track of the other, which averages out the empty/full performance.
Ed

[Oliver Peters]
“The best results are with a separate FW card and two of the 500GB drives striped together with the card.

[Walter Biscardi]
You had them striped together and both running off the single FW card? That will result in pretty slow performance vs. one drive connected to the Mac FW800 Port and the second connected to the FW card. You basically get two channel performance when you run one drive on the card and one on the Mac for much faster performance right through the capacity of the units. This is how my two 500GB units have been running for the past year both on my G5 and the G4.”