Performance
We're comparing the 8TB Porsche Design Desktop Drive with an array of external storage solutions that include a 256GB Patriot USB pen drive, a 512GB SK hynix SSD attached via a cheap-and-cheerful SATA-to-USB 3.0 cable, as well as a 2TB My Passport Ultra and an 8TB Seagate Innov8.
Starting with a simple sequential read and write test, we can get a feel for the drive's performance in a best-case scenario. These numbers can be deemed representative of a real-world sequential transfer of a single large file, and both read and write speeds are healthy at 204.9MB/s and 188.1MB/s, respectively.
LaCie doesn't state which particular hard disk is being used inside the Desktop Drive, but our benchmarks show it to be a reasonably quick 8TB spinner. Our second test involves two scenarios; copying across a folder containing large files such as ISOs; and copying across a program folder full of various small files.
Speeds of 49.5MB/s and 27.0MB/s, respectively, are decent if not spectacular. Having 8TB of space should provide peace of mind, but going by these figures it would take a while to fill even half of the available room. Speeds are competitive with similar hard disks, mind, and the silver lining here is that the LaCie drive does remain suitably quiet during use, with the chassis doing a fine job of soaking-up vibration while keeping cool at all times.