In the LaCie presentation today, the Little Big Disk was the highlight of the affair, with the FUEL being a major new product in addition to their refresh of the Little Big Disk series.
The Little Big Disk touts itself using a Thunderbolt 2 connection, reconfiguring from the previous edition into 2x the speed with a new controller in the drive and on the computer. Redesigned completely using the new NGFF M.2 form factor with PCIe bus connectors, it can reach 8-900 mb/s transfer speeds. The device itself contains two separate drives in RAID 0 or 1 leaving it to the user to decide on how to configure it. Clocked speeds of up to 1375 MB/s transfer speeds have been clocked on both the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro.
The LaCie FUEL, a much higher end version of the Seagate Wireless Plus was presented as being more user friendly all around. Using the XFat file system instead of NTFS, the platform remains operating system neutral with support across most platforms. With a better battery life, powered-off discharge rate, and charging mechanism than the Wireless Plus, the device also contains a wifi repeater with support for up to 5 simultaneous users. Further, the software on the device features Dropbox integration and allows users to synchronize through their cloud service.
Since their acquisition, LaCie has maintained a strong brand presence and identity separate of Seagate, not by any coincidence. As their product lines expand, consumers should expect to see LaCie as a higher end and higher price point brand for people looking for the next step in storage technology.
