![](/Content/images/logo2.png)
Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14247/lacie-d2-professional-10tb-directattached-storage-capsule-review
LaCie d2 Professional 10TB Direct-Attached Storage Capsule Review
by Ganesh T S on April 29, 2019 9:00 AM ESTSeagate has a number of direct-attached storage (DAS) products for content creators under the LaCie brand. These include both hard drive and SSD-based units with both USB and Thunderbolt interfaces. While the SSD-based units (such as the LaCie Portable SSD we reviewed recently) are bus-powered, LaCie also has wall-powered enclosures with much higher-capacity hard drives.
Back in 2014, we had evaluated LaCie's d2 Thunderbolt 2 DAS. The LaCie d2 Professional, introduced last year, has a very similar industrial design, but, replaces the Thunderbolt 2 / USB 3.0 interfaces with a single USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C interface. The product also moves to a much higher capacity point - while the 2014 version came with a 6TB hard drive, the d2 Professional (2018) version we are looking at today comes with a 10TB drive. In the rest of this capsule review, we're taking a look at the performance and features that d2 Professional can provide for consumers dealing with the need to process and store large amounts of data.
Introduction and Product Impressions
The LaCie d2 Professional is a single hard drive inside a stylish USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C enclosure. Seagate uses a BarraCuda Pro, a 7200 RPM desktop drive with a 300TB/yr workload rating, inside the product. The product package comes with a 18W wall-wart (using replaceable plug adapters) and two USB cables (2ft. each). The drive comes pre-formatted in exFAT, and has both Windows and Mac software to enable users to get started with the product. Registration and warranty activation, along with the activation of the value additions (1-month complimentary membership to the Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan, amd the Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Service) is possible if the system is connected to the Internet at the time of running the software. The LaCie Toolkit software is also downloaded as part of this setup process.
The LaCie Toolkit helps users to configure the d2 Professional for usage as a backup or a mirroring drive. It also prompts for the formatting of the drive for the best performance, depending on the OS (NTFS on Windows systems). The backup feature is highly configurable - the data / folders to monitor, as well as the backup frequency, can be set up using the Toolkit.
It is trivial to access the internal drive (if the need arises) by removing the three screws in the rear panel.
The d2 Professional uses the ASMedia ASM235CM SATA to USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C bridge chip. This is the same bridge that we have seen in other Seagate products such as the Seagate Fast SSD and the LaCie Portable SSD.
The table below presents the detailed specifications and miscellaneous aspects of the LaCie d2 Professional and how they compare against the other external hard drives evaluated by us in the recent past.
Power Consumption - CrystalDiskMark | ||
![]() |
![]() |
We note that the LaCie d2 Professional has a maximum power consumption of around 9.1W (for the CrystalDiskMark workloads). It idles at around 4.4W. In the absence of any disk access, the d2 Professional completely spins down the disk (0W power consumption at the wall) after 20 minutes, as shown in the graph above.
Concluding Remarks
External hard drives are invariably the DAS-type of choice when it comes to cost-effective storage of huge amounts of data. The LaCie d2 Professional offers up to 10TB of storage at prices ranging from $200 (5c/GB) for the 4TB version to $350 (3.5c/GB) for the 10TB one. It also wins out on power efficiency (coming behind only the now EOL-ed Seagate Innov8), with a peak power consumption of just 9.1W for our evaluated workloads. The supplied 2ft. data cables are also the longest amongst all the external wall-powered DAS units that we have evaluated so far.
On the pricing front, we have other options in the market such as the G-Technology USB 3.0 Type-C drive with PD at $300 and its vanilla Type-A variant at $284. Value options with a vanilla USB 3.0 interface (and much lower peak performance) include the Seagate Expansion at $250, WD Elements at $214, and the WD Easystore at $210. Thunderbolt 3-enabled external hard drives, such as the LaCie d2 Thunderbolt 3 ($500) and the G-Technology G-Drive with Thunderbolt 3 ($550), come with additional features and are appropriately priced higher.
The lower-priced alternatives to the LaCie d2 Professional come with lower performance numbers and do not bundle value additions such as the Adobe Creative Apps plan and the Rescue data recovery service. The combination of these features make the LaCie d2 Professional an attractive option for professional content creators.