LaCie 2big Thunderbolt Series (6TB)

Pros: Build quality, quite operation, small enough footprint, very high speed.

Cons: The power brick creates an unnecessary mess, I would vote for a slightly larger size with integrated power.

Summary: Used with my MacBook Pro and the Thunderbolt monitor, this is a very clean and very quiet way to have fast RAID storage without the need for earplugs.

I store RAW digital camera files and my iTunes media on this unit and find it to be very much an upgrade from my previous screaming RAID boxes. I plug the device into a switchable power strip so it is not always running but as it mounts instantly when booted, toggling it on and off as required is easy.

With a Firewire CD card reader connected to the system, I can drain a CF card of RAW images in stupidly fast time.

Overall, I am very pleased with the balance of very, very fast speed and lack of superfluous noise. Sure, periodically you can hear a drive do a seek, etc., but this is nothing compared to having stead state fans howling to cool my previous generation of storage.