LaCie 5big

The LaCie 5big Thunderbolt Series ($2,199 list) is one of the largest, fastest drives we've ever reviewed.

It holds a massive 20TB of space in a single RAID 0 volume, enough for many hours of HD video, and the dual Thunderbolt interface means that you can work on several HD streams at once.

he large backlit blue dome on the 5big's front panel tempers its imposing girth. The blue dome of light makes the aluminum block look friendlier

From the sides, the 5big is a featureless monolith.

From the sides, the 5big is a featureless monolith.

The 5big is pre-formatted HFS+, telegraphing the primary audience for the drive.

The 5big's drive sleds are easily removable.

Each drive is on an easily-swappable sled, in case you need to physically archive the drives and their data

The drive's back panel has a pair of 10Gbps Thunderbolt ports, AC adapter port, Kensington lock port, and the exhaust for the cooling fan.

For speed and capacity, we left the drive in RAID 0 (striping) configuration. In this config, you have an insane 20TB of drive space (five 4TB drives).