LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2 DAS Review
by Ganesh T S on September 10, 2014 12:55 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- Seagate
- LaCie
- DAS
- Thunderbolt 2
Performance Metrics
The performance testing of the d2 Thunderbolt 2 was done separate from the d2 Thunderbolt 2 + d2 SSD Upgrade kit. In the first configuration, we only tested performance over USB 3.0, while the second configuration was used for Thunderbolt 2 testing. In both cases, the evaluation was done in two ways - the first involved HD Tune Pro's artificial benchmarks. The second one was using our robocopy test suite (for testing out read and write bandwidths separately) complemented by real-life workloads from PCMark 8's storage bench (for testing out simultaneous read/write situations).
The gallery below shows the performance of the hard drive block with HD Tune Pro.
The reads seem to be suffering some issues (less than 100 MBps through almost all the tests), while the writes can ramp up to 200 MBps in certain cases.
Moving on to the PCIe SSD segment, it must first be noted that the sequential read/writes (the first two tests in the gallery below) are not really meant for SSDs, but intended for hard drives (to see how data delivery speeds vary as we move from the inner to the outer tracks in the platters). These show less than 600 MBps for the PCIe SSD, but those are much less than what the block is really capable of. The other benchmarks show around 960 MBps for the 1 MB random reads and 1070 MBps for the 8 MB random reads. The writes clock in a bit lower around 510 MBps for certain workloads.
The SSD segment really excels at higher queue depths. These are easy to achieve in traditional workloads, but is it possible to take advantage of it in the usual DAS usage scenarios? To test this out, we ran our robocopy benchmarks with different settings for multiple threads. All our findings are presented in the tables below. The data also includes results from processing the PCMark 8 storage bench on the particular storage block.
| LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2 - HDD (USB3) robocopy Benchmarks (MBps) | ||||||||
| Write to DAS | Read from DAS | |||||||
| 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | |
| Photos | 156.87 | 162.93 | 157.59 | 140.72 | 112.85 | 86.43 | 84.40 | 82.33 |
| Videos | 162.01 | 167.90 | 168.47 | 166.07 | 83.73 | 79.51 | 77.57 | 74.37 |
| BR | 170.51 | 187.03 | 180.49 | 188.16 | 84.12 | 84.34 | 82.33 | 83.55 |
| LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 2 - HDD (USB3) PCMark8 Storage Benchmarks (MBps) | ||
| Write Bandwidth | Read Bandwidth | |
| Adobe Photoshop (Light) | 153.24 | 4.68 |
| Adobe Photoshop (Heavy) | 106.07 | 5.65 |
| Adobe After Effects | 37.85 | 4.75 |
| Adobe Illustrator | 114.75 | 4.63 |
| LaCie d2 SSD Upgrade - PCIe SSD robocopy Benchmarks (MBps) | ||||||||
| Write to DAS | Read from DAS | |||||||
| Threads | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 | 8 | 16 | 32 | 64 |
| Photos | 457.25 | 450.72 | 444.83 | 446.95 | 944.81 | 922.29 | 889.48 | 891.83 |
| Videos | 457.55 | 455.05 | 451.24 | 448.33 | 887.68 | 847.21 | 835.50 | 829.78 |
| BR | 476.30 | 462.04 | 463.98 | 460.84 | 819.89 | 821.46 | 822.85 | 815.86 |
| LaCie d2 SSD Upgrade - PCIe SSD PCMark8 Storage Benchmarks (MBps) | ||
| Write Bandwidth | Read Bandwidth | |
| Adobe Photoshop (Light) | 641.76 | 164.45 |
| Adobe Photoshop (Heavy) | 723.80 | 180.13 |
| Adobe After Effects | 223.35 | 192.91 |
| Adobe Illustrator | 566.83 | 192.49 |
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vFunct - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Drobo also has an external hybrid HD/SSD storage system.m2inor - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
Drobo uses mSATA. LaCie is using PCIe SSD for much faster I/O.simonrichter - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
You are right, and also LaCie doesn't match up to some of the really good computer storage devices (see http://www.consumertop.com/best-computer-storage-g... for example).sheh - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
I think USB 3.1's Alternate Modes pretty much dooms Thunderbolt.tricktech - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Interested to know when you get an update on the CRC errors and temperature - on the hook waiting to buy one of these drives.hketterle - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
Anandtech, please review external Thunderbolt devices with a Mac system as well. The past three reviews (2Big Thunderbolt 2, Promise M4, and now the d2 Thunderbolt 2) have all been reviewed on a Windows test rig. First off most Thunderbolt users today are likely to be on Mac systems as Thunderbolt is built into all Macs of the last 3 years. Secondly, I don't think this gives particularly accurate results. The main result I call into question is the R/W speeds of the 2Big Thunderbolt 2. These are much lower than Lacie's claims, and slower than the previous version despite using higher density drives (at least on the 12TB model). It seems likely that there is a performance bottleneck in the Thunderbolt adapter or software your test rig uses.I really loved your earlier reviews of Thunderbolt external storage (like Anand's review with the Thunderbolt display sound issues) and would like to see your site keep up the high standard of technical review. I think this would require testing Thunderbolt with a Mac system as well.
hketterle - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
haha, would have been good to read the whole review before posting. Thanks for the effort to test with a Mac toofredzer - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
It is much cheaper to just remove the HDD from the unit and replace it with an SSD, without buying the LaCie upgrade kit. That way, you get lots more storage (up to 1TB SSDs are available). I did this with a Crucial SSD, and it works just fine. Speeds top out in benchmarks at about 450 MB/sec, but that's probably due to the fact that my SSD is over a year old.sagesupport - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
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