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LaCie 2big Quadra Enterprise Class 

• D

esign

 

by

 n

eil

 P

oulton

 

Table of Contents

User Manual 

page 1

Table of Contents

1.  Introduction .................................................................................................................. 4

1.1.  Minimum System Requirements ......................................................................................................... 5
1.2.  Box Content .................................................................................................................................... 6
1.3.  Views of the Drive ............................................................................................................................ 7
1.4.  Hard Drive Heat Management .......................................................................................................... 9
1.5.  Cables and Connectors .................................................................................................................. 10

1.5.1.  USB 2.0 .............................................................................................................................. 10
1.5.2.  FireWire .............................................................................................................................. 10
1.5.3.  eSATA ................................................................................................................................. 11

2.  Setting Up Your LaCie 2big......................................................................................... 12

2.1.  Connect the Interface Cable ........................................................................................................... 13
2.2.  Turn On the 2big ........................................................................................................................... 14

3.  RAID ........................................................................................................................... 15

3.1.  About RAID Modes......................................................................................................................... 15

3.1.1.  RAID 0 ................................................................................................................................ 15
3.1.2.  Concatenation ..................................................................................................................... 16
3.1.3.  Safe (RAID 1) ....................................................................................................................... 16
3.1.4.  Mixed (RAID 1 and RAID 0) ................................................................................................... 17

3.2.  Changing the RAID Mode ............................................................................................................... 18
3.3.  Removing and Installing Drives ........................................................................................................ 19
3.4.  Formatting and Partitioning ............................................................................................................. 20

3.4.1.  File System Formats .............................................................................................................. 20
3.4.2.  Windows Users .................................................................................................................... 22
3.4.3.  Mac Users ........................................................................................................................... 24

4.  Troubleshooting ......................................................................................................... 25

4.1.  LED Status Indicators ...................................................................................................................... 26
4.2.  Other Troubleshooting Topics ......................................................................................................... 27
4.3.  Installing New Firmware  ................................................................................................................ 27

5.  Contacting Customer Support ..................................................................................... 28

5.1.  LaCie Technical Support Contacts ................................................................................................... 29

6.  Warranty Information ................................................................................................. 30

Summary of Contents for 2big Quadra USB 3.0

Page 1: ... the Interface Cable 13 2 2 Turn On the 2big 14 3 RAID 15 3 1 About RAID Modes 15 3 1 1 RAID 0 15 3 1 2 Concatenation 16 3 1 3 Safe RAID 1 16 3 1 4 Mixed RAID 1 and RAID 0 17 3 2 Changing the RAID Mode 18 3 3 Removing and Installing Drives 19 3 4 Formatting and Partitioning 20 3 4 1 File System Formats 20 3 4 2 Windows Users 22 3 4 3 Mac Users 24 4 Troubleshooting 25 4 1 LED Status Indicators 26 4...

Page 2: ...ion This equipment generates uses and can radiate radio frequency energy and if not installed and used in accordance with the instructions may cause harmful interference to radio com munications However there is no guarantee that interference will not occur in a particu lar installation If this equipment does cause harmful interference to radio or television re ception which can be determined by t...

Page 3: ...re is a risk of light ning or if it will be unused for an ex tended period of time Otherwise there is an increased risk of electrical shock short circuiting or fire Use only the power supply shipped with the device Do not use the LaCie 2big near other electrical appliances such as televi sions radios or speakers Doing so may cause interference which will ad versely affect the operation of the othe...

Page 4: ...sily configured using the LaCie Desktop Manager makes the 2big a secure vault for your data Register your Enterprise Class product at www lacie com within 30 days of its purchase date to take advantage of LaCie Enterprise Class Service For no additional cost LaCie guarantees that your Enterprise Class product will receive the highest priority from our Technical Support team Please note that the te...

Page 5: ... of Apple OS 10 4 x 10 5 x or 10 6 x eSATA FireWire 400 FireWire 800 and or USB 2 0 Minimum of 600MB recommended Windows XP will not recognize logical volumes with capacity great er than 2TB For details see section 3 4 1 File System Formats Most computers do not come from the factory with eSATA ports so you may need to purchase a connection card such as PCI or PCI E to be able to connect your LaCi...

Page 6: ...Box Content Your LaCie 2big package contains the system tower and an acces sories box containing the items listed below 1 LaCie 2big RAID system tower with two hot swappable Enter prise Class hard drives 2 Hi Speed USB 2 0 cable 3 FireWire 400 cable 4 FireWire 800 cable 5 eSATA cable 6 External power supply 7 LaCie Utilities CD ROM 8 Quick Install Guide 9 2 in 1 RAID mode change and drive removal ...

Page 7: ...3 Views of the Drive Front View The blue button on the front of the LaCie 2big serves as a LED drive status indicator and the LaCie Shortcut Button See the LaCie Desktop Manager User Manual on the CD ROM for more information See troubleshooting section 4 1 LED Status Indicators for more in formation ...

Page 8: ...onnection 8 Drive lock 9 Drive tray handle 10 Drive status LED CAUTION To avoid overheating the LaCie 2big should be installed in a well ventilated area and in such a way as to maintain sufficient airflow across the controller chips Also ensure that the Ventilation Fan is not obstructed Environmental Requirements Temperature 0 35 C 32 95 F Operation Humidity 20 80 non condensing Storage Humidity 1...

Page 9: ...zed when the drive is in the vertical posi tion If you have several LaCie drives stacked on each other please remember to attach the included rubber feet on the under side of your drives This will allow for some airflow between your drives so that the heat dissipation can work effectively LaCie does not recom mend stacking or racking more than 3 drives on top of each other especially if these driv...

Page 10: ... high speed serial in put output technology for connecting peripheral devices to a com puter or to each other and FireWire 800 is the implementation of the new IEEE 1394b standard FireWire 800 offers increased bandwidth and extended cabling dis tance between devices FireWire 800 is ideal for bandwidth inten sive applications such as audio video and graphics Included FireWire Cables Your LaCie hard...

Page 11: ...durable eS ATA connectors do not have the L shaped design of other SATA connectors In addition the guide features are vertically offset and reduced in size to prevent the use of unshielded internal cables in external applications Included eSATA Cable Your LaCie drive is shipped with an eSATA cable to ensure maxi mum data transfer performance when connected to a eSATA port eSATA Benefits eSATA inte...

Page 12: ...encryption configured If you want to set up encryption install the LaCie Desktop Manager and refer that application s user manual IMPORTANT INFO LaCie Enterprise Class encryption offers a very high level of protection for your most important data Due to the strength of the encryption data recovery will not be possible in the unlikely event of disk or part failure 2 Setting Up Your LaCie 2big Step ...

Page 13: ...able USB FireWire or eSATA into the corresponding port on your host computer 2 Connect the other end of the cable to the matching port on the 2big TECHNICAL NOTE If two interfaces are connected at the same time the first one connected remains active and the second will not work off auto on safe mixed big fast eSATA USB 2 0 FireWire 800 FireWire 400 ...

Page 14: ... use a power supply from another LaCie device or another manufacturer Using any other power cable or power supply may cause damage to the device and void your warranty Always remove the AC adapter before transporting your LaCie drive Failure to remove the adapter may result in damage to your drive and will void your warranty TECHNICAL NOTE You may use your LaCie drive when in a for eign country th...

Page 15: ...the data of all disks becomes inaccessible because parts of the data have been written to all disks RAID Mode Capacity Protection Speed Fast RAID 0 100 Big Concatenation 100 Safe RAID 1 50 Mixed RAID 0 and RAID 1 75 Applications RAID 0 is ideal for users who need maximum speed and capacity Video editors working with very large files may use RAID 0 when editing multiple streams of video for optimal...

Page 16: ...and data that is partially written on the failed disk and an operative disk is lost Offers the maximum possible capacity by combining the capacities of several drives into one large volume 3 1 3 Safe RAID 1 In Safe mode RAID 1 the two physical disks are mirrored together so that one single logical volume mounts on the desktop Fig 09 All data is saved simultaneously on each disk the available capac...

Page 17: ... capacity cannot exceed 50 of the lowest capacity single disk IMPORTANT INFO If one physical disk fails the data of the SAFE volume is available on the second disk Only 25 of full capacity is protected by mirroring In this case data on the Fast RAID 0 volume will be lost One Fast volume RAID 0 enables the user to work with the high speed of RAID 0 Applications Provides two volumes for different da...

Page 18: ... is ready to be reformatted see section 3 4 Formatting and Partitioning IMPORTANT INFO You must partition the disk drives after changing the storage policy configuration See section 3 4 Format ting and Partitioning CAUTION Your LaCie 2big comes preconfigured in Fast RAID 0 mode Fast mode allows access to the whole storage capacity and enhanced transfer speeds However Fast mode does not provide dat...

Page 19: ... is in Safe or Mixed mode you can leave it turned on and continue to step 2 2 Carefully insert the drive tray into an empty drive bay When the drive tray is most of the way in and you feel resistance press the drive tray handle firmly until you feel the drive snap into place and the drive tray handle is flush with the back of the 2big 3 Use the 2 in 1 tool to lock the drive lock Turn the locks unt...

Page 20: ...ws 7 When FAT 32 is used with Windows 2000 Windows XP and Windows Vista though volume size is limited to 32GB by the Windows partition utility i e Disk Manager and the individual file size is limited to 4GB NTFS This acronym stands for New Technology Filing System and it is the native file system for Windows NT Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows Vista and Windows 7 NTFS offers several features that a...

Page 21: ...em by using hard disk space more efficiently With HFS you are no longer limited by block size MS DOS File System FAT 32 This is the Microsoft file system more typically known as FAT 32 This is the file system to use if you are go ing to be using your LaCie Hard Drive between Macs and Windows operating systems Mac File System Formats There are two possible file system format categories for Mac user...

Page 22: ...Windows Vista 32 and 64 bit versions and Win dows 7 32 and 64 bit versions These operating systems will recog nize volumes greater than 2TB in size but the disks must be converted to the GPT file system before partitions greater than 2TB can be cre ated 1 Connect the drive to the power source and to the computer via the interface port 2 Right click My Computer and select Manage 3 From the Computer...

Page 23: ...ct Quick Format Click Next Fig 16 14 Click Finish to begin the formatting process 15 Windows Disk Management will format and partition the disk according to your settings Fig 17 and your drive will appear in My Computer ready to use IMPORTANT INFO Please refer to section 3 4 1 File System Formats for a more detailed comparison of the various file system formats Fig 16 Fig 17 ...

Page 24: ...ost 16 partitions You can adjust the size of each partition using the slide bar between the partitions in the Volume Scheme area 7 In the Volume Information section enter a name for each volume partition choose the volume format 8 Once you have finalized the volume options click Partition Click Partition again when the alert message appears to con tinue 9 Mac Disk Utility will format and partition...

Page 25: ...ic question You can also visit the drivers pages where the most recent software updates will be available If you need further assistance please contact your LaCie reseller or LaCie Technical Support see section 5 Contacting Customer Support for details Manual Updates LaCie is constantly striving to give you the most up to date comprehensive user manuals available on the market It is our goal to pr...

Page 26: ...ctional disks Safe One drive has failed or was improperly inserted RAID is functional but the security of the drives has been compromised Mixed Solid red Solid red failed disks and solid blue functional disks All One or more drives have failed or are improperly inserted RAID is not functional Blinking blue red Normal LED activity All Temperature alert allow the 2big to finish current processes and...

Page 27: ...ity with the 2big Quadra See section 1 1 Minimum System Requirements for more information Make sure the power supply is properly connected see section 2 2 Turn On the 2big that the drive has been turned on by pressing the On Off Auto button the back of the drive and that the outlet the power supply is connected to is also turned on Make sure that the drive has been formatted properly Please see se...

Page 28: ...uter and that you have the following information on hand 5 Contacting Customer Support Information Where to Find Information 1 LaCie hard drive serial number Located on a sticker at the back of drive or on the original packaging 3 Macintosh PC model Mac users Click on the Apple icon in the menu bar and select About This Mac Windows users Right click My Computer and select Properties General 4 Oper...

Page 29: ...p www lacie com fr contact LaCie Germany Contact us at http www lacie com de contact LaCie Italy Contact us at http www lacie com it contact Japan ELECOM CO LTD Contact us at http www lacie com jp LaCie Netherlands Contact us at http www lacie com nl contact LaCie Norway Contact us at http www lacie com no contact LaCie Spain Contact us at http www lacie com es contact LaCie Sweden Contact us at h...

Page 30: ...removal replacement process see section 3 3 Re moving and Installing Drives LaCie and its suppliers accept no liability for any loss of data during the use of this device or for any of the problems caused as a result LaCie will not under any circumstances be liable for direct special or consequential damages such as but not limited to damage or loss of property or equipment loss of profits or reve...

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