LaCie 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3 Review

1. Introduction2. LaCie 2big Dock Thunderbird 3 20TB3. LaCie RAID Manager4. Testing Methodology5. Crystal Disk Mark / ATTO6. Backup / Restore7. Throughput 8. Real Life File Transfers9. Closing Thoughts10. View All Pages

 

The box front has a very large, clear image of the unit along with a small panel in the top right hand corner which shows the units capacity, stated transfer speed, hard disk speed and the fact they are enterprise class drives. The rear of the box has a image of the rear of the unit and a 3/4 view of the front with all the relevant features clearly labelled.

There are also three multilingual displays showing various aspects of how the drive can be used; Docking points to connect peripherals, Dual Thunderbolt 3 ports for 5K workflows and USB 3.0 compatibility for PCs and Macs.

 

One side of the box has a full sized image of the front of the unit, while the other side has a comprehensive feature panel, a specification panel and lists of box contents, downloadable software options and system requirements.

   

The front of the unit is basically made up by the two drive doors, the top one of which has the usual LaCie Blue LED indicator ‘orb' which turns from its usual Blue to Red if any drastic happens to the system. Under the drive doors is a single USB 3.0 port along with  CompactFlash and SecureDigital slots.

 

The rear panel is dominated by the grill for the cooling fan. The choice of fan for the 2big Dock is an interesting one as it's not from the usual suspects of fan manufacturers you normally find in these type of devices. LaCie have chosen a Noctua fan for the 2big Dock and not just any old Noctua fan but one of their special quiet fans; a 60mm Noctua NF-A6x25 FLX, which uses a self-stabilising oil-pressure bearing (SSO-Bearing) with a speed rating of between 1,600rpm and 3,000rpm. The sound level for this fan ranges from 8.2dB(A) to 19.3 dB(A).

To the left of the grill is the power button which also doubles up as a confirmation button for RAID configurations. The problem with this idea is that having a semi recessed button is fine if the unit is on a desk, but if its sitting on a shelf and you have to fumble around trying to find it you will end up cursing the designer especially as if you are using it as the RAID confirmation button as the RAID Manager software doesn't give you that much time to confirm any changes. But to be fair to LaCie you not going to be swapping RAID types around too often in everyday situations.

Sitting under the grill are the power input port, the two Thunderbolt 3 ports, a USB 3.1 Type-C port and a DisplayPort. Positioned between the Thunderbolt and USB ports is a firmware update button that only works for USB firmware updates.

 

The drive doors have Blue indicator LEDS built into the side of them and the drive bays support hot swapping of drives. The 20TB version of the 2Big Dock comes with two Seagate IronWolf Pro hard drives installed. These are 7 platter (disc) designs with a 7,200rpm spin speed and 256MB of cache.

As usual with a LaCie drive, the box bundle contains most of the power leads known to man. Along with these are an 84W power adapter (Hoioto ADS-110DL-12-1),  Thunderbolt 3 cable (which is rather short), a USB Type-C to Type-A cable and a manual.

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