LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt v2 Packs SATA III SSDs For 635MB/s

LaCie has updated its Little Big Disk Thunderbolt drive, boosting speed by up to a third over the already-whippet-like first-gen model. Now including a pair of SATA III SSDs, with read speeds up to 635MB/s, the new Little Big Disk is still clad in a distinctive aluminum chassis but delivers, LaCie claims, the fastest Thunderbolt rates around.

In fact, LaCie claims that the turn of speed the new SATA III drives bring means users will be able to transfer 50GB from their Thunderbolt-equipped PC or Mac to the drive in under two minutes. Alternatively, they'll be able to edit six uncompressed video streams simultaneously.

As with its predecessor, there are twin Thunderbolt ports so that different peripherals – up to six at once – can be daisy-chained. However, now LaCie includes a Thunderbolt cable in the box, something we dinged them for not doing first time around.

The two SSDs can be set up as a RAID 0 or RAID 1 array, depending on whether you're prioritizing capacity or redundancy. The 512GB model is priced from £589 ($943), while there's also a more expensive 1TB version.