8 years in technology change is probably comparable to 100 years of change in human life. That’s how old my “old” hard drive setup was and it was like T-Rex was alive. Right at the eight year mark my Lacie 2Big hard drive decided it was time to quit. This was a 6TB drive that held ALL of my edited photos. It was at capacity, which meant I had a cobbled system of other drives running and storing miscellaneous projects and photos as well. While this failure came at a pretty in-opportunistic time, I decided a major upgrade was going to have to happen. Quickly searching the web I realized that the best bang for my buck was going to be a set of Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 desktop drives.

Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 Desktop Details

The Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 desktop drives are pretty well spec’d. Housed inside of the Neil Poulton designed enclosures sit Seagate BarraCuda Pro enterprise-class drives for incredible reliability and performance. These drives are even backed by a best-in-class 5-year limited warranty that includes Rescue Data Recovery Services. For a professional photographer who relies on drives like these as his main storage, that is more piece of mind than ever.

The Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 desktop drives are thunderbolt 3 but also backward compatible to Thunderbolt 1 and 2. There is also a USB 3.1 port to run natively on USB should you choose. Though I don’t know why you would even consider that option. Lacie claims that it only takes 5 minutes to download an entire 64GB Flash Card onto one of these drives. You can also charge your laptop from the drives. One other little important point – these drives are unbelievably quiet.

Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 Desktop Replacing

Like I mentioned earlier, these Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 Desktop Drives were replacing my main 6TB Lacie 2Big Disk. However, with this much desktop storage, I decided to replace ALL of my hard drives. That included a Lacie 10TB 5Big Thunderbolt 2 RAID system and a 1TB Thunderbolt 1 Little Big Disk. I chose the Thunderbolt 3 d2 series, as opposed to the USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 versions, for future forward compatibility. I definitely simplified my drive situation.

My current iMac 5K Retina Display is aging too. It does have native USB 2 and Thunderbolt 2, but I am headed for the new iMac Pro. The iMac Pro runs Thunderbolt 3 natively. This choice meant that I needed an additional $50 adapter to run these Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 desktop drives. Which was fine for me at this point, knowing full well the future is coming.

So my new Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 desktop drives function as photo storage (with room to spare) and a complete backup system for my photos and my iMac’s entire hard drive.

Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 Desktop Speed

If I were running a video production studio, I probably would have opted for a Lacie 6Big or 12Big RAID System. For mostly photography work though, the Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 desktop drives function just fine. Lacie claims that these drives transfer up to 240MB/s when plugged into Thunderbolt 3. While I am still using them on a Thunderbolt 2 system, I definitely saw an increase in speed when running Adobe Lightroom and Capture One Pro. This was compared to my first generation Thunderbolt 2Big drive that crapped out.

You can also daisy chain up to six Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 desktop drives together. Which allows for 60TB of desktop storage for a very reasonable price point.

Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 Desktop Price

Then there is the price of the Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 desktop drives. $599.99 a piece! If you couple the price with the extremely quiet operation and the fact that their footprint on my desktop measures 4″ x 8 1/2″, they may be my favorite new piece of gear in my office! The drives come with the necessary Thunderbolt 3 and USB cables as well.

WHO IS THIS FOR?

The Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 desktop drives are for any photographer needing more storage or a storage upgrade. The d2 series of drives are available in multiple options sets. You have USB, Thunderbolt 2 and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity options. In addition, storage capacities range from 3TB to 10TB. The 8TB models and higher have the aforementioned Seagate BarraCuda Pro enterprise-class drives.

Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 – POSITIVES

Small compact size.

Fast write speeds for single hard drive system.

Great price point for drive size.

Backwards Thunderbolt compatibility.

Super quiet.

Have been running since September 2017 without issue.

5 Year warranty and enterprise-class drives.

You can daisy chain up to 6 together.

Lacie d2 10TB Thunderbolt 3 – NEGATIVES

Largest drive is 10TB.

Need adapter if you only can run Thunderbolt 1 or 2 with your current computer.

GET YOU SOME OF THIS.