Introduction
We recently reviewed the LaCie 2big NAS. It's a NAS for two 3.5-inch disks, in a solid aluminium chassis with appealing design. Our test indicated it performs reasonable well, but we weren't exactly blown away. LaCie also wasn't completely satisfied, it felt the hardware could do better. Updated firmware, in the form of version 2.5.6.1, was supposed to provide the solution. In any case, it was reason enough for us to have a second look at the LaCie 2big NAS. If you haven't read it yet, we recommend reading the introduction and the page about the firmware.
The performance has been improved significantly. We tested the LaCie 2big NAS with the included 6 TB Seagate ST3000DM001 disks and with our standard WD WD5000AAKX drives, and also in its diskless configuration. With the old firmare the LaCie 2big NAS had an average transfer rate in Intel NASPT of 65 MB/s with the standard Seagate disk, but with the new firmware that's become 78 MB/s. With the standard WD disk the difference is even bigger, it went from 55 MB/s to 85 MB/s!
When we look at the file transfer tests in NAS Performance Tester we can also see significant improvements. Writing with the standard 3TB disk in the 6TB version of the LaCie 2big NAS was 49 MB/s, and reading 75MB/s. The write speed remained about the same at 51 MB/s, but the read speed was increased to 94 MB/s! With our standard Western Digital test disk there are big improvements in the read speed from 75 MB/s to 93.5 MB/s. Bottomline, the read speed is now at a very acceptable level, only the write speed still isn't top of the line.
Performance NAS Performance Tester
We tested the LaCie 2big NAS in a configuration with one installed hard drive, in order to make a fair comparison. We connected the NAS via Gigabit LAN to one of our test PCs. With the NAS Performance Tester 1.2 software we tested the maximum transfer rate.
