Review: LaCie 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3 External Drive
By Jim Bask
LaCie’s 2big Dock most unique feature is the front facing SD/CompactFlash Card Slots, which allow you to directly ingest files from memory cards! Read on for more perspective:
…Setting up the LaCie Thunderbolt 3 2big Dock is easy–in fact, it’s mostly just unbox and plug in. LaCie also offers some RAID manager software that you can install to help manage the drive arrays. By default the drive comes in a RAID 0 configuration and formatted in HFS+, you can however, choose a RAID 1 or independent drive (JBOD) configuration if you wish (just remember that may affect performance). One thing of note: when I received the drive, macOS High Sierra had just been released which features the new APFS (Apple File System) so I decided to format the 2big Dock with APFS as well….
Ever since moving most of my computing to a MacBook Pro and away from a desktop computer I’ve been storing my entire music collection on an external drive. Prior to receiving this 20TB Thunderbolt 3 2big Dock, I had been using a Thunderbolt 2 8TB 2big drive to store my music and movies and had iTunes configured to play the files off of the external drive. That setup worked well enough, there was sometimes a little lag going on between songs or starting up a movie, but overall, it worked. That being said, I was really happy to see (and hear) when I moved my music and movie libraries over to the new Thunderbolt 3 2big Dock that small amount of lag was eliminated. This is likely a combination of the faster drives and the faster Thunderbolt 3 connection. Sometimes it’s the tiny things that matter most…..[continue reading]