Please note the following before replacing or adding a hard drive:
Please read the following sections before purchasing a non-LaCie disk:
Please follow the directions in the following sections when installing a non-LaCie disk or replacing a LaCie 5big drive:
Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning has been the hard drive standard for many years. It supports a maximum of four primary partitions with a size limit of 2TB per partition. To accommodate higher capacity hard drives, Global Unique Identifier Partition Tables (GPT) allows for more partitions that can exceed 2TB. Further, GPT has additional advantages that enhance performance.
The 5big Office and 5big Office+ operating systems must run on disks formatted with MBR. If the operating system is stored on mirrored drives, both disks must be formatted with MBR.
However, LaCie supports using data drives formatted with GPT.
Switching from MBR to GPT or, conversely, from GPT to MBR, is not difficult:
For optimal performance and to avoid potential conflicts, LaCie recommends that:
Non-LaCie disk(s): Please check the specifications of your non-LaCie disk(s) for further information.
At the time of this writing, disks larger than 2TB are not tested within the 5big enclosure. Please note that LaCie cannot support disks larger than 2TB without evaluating their performance, integrity, and durability. With greater market adaptation, LaCie will incorporate a wider range of drives into its rigorous qualification model. Please go to our HDD Compatibility List for periodic updates.
The RAID configurations in this Technical Brief assume 1TB or 2TB drives. Further, the examples include disks with the same capacity. Administrators are advised to follow the default or recommended configurations within this Technical Brief and to use two to five disks of equal capacity within the enclosure.
You may experience problems when installing unsupported drives in the 5big enclosure. For example, attempting to use one or two 3TB drives in the system mirror. Since the drive(s) must be formatted with MBR to run Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials or Windows Home Server 2011, the system only recognizes the first 2TB of storage. The administrator risks losing 1TB to 2TB of storage capacity.
Certainly, larger capacity external drives are ideal for backing up your 5big Office/Office+ data via the USB 2.0 and eSATA ports. Make certain to format drives with capacities greater than 2TB using GPT.
The slot order in the 5big enclosure is important. LaCie recommends inserting new drives in the order of the numbered slots, from left to right. For example, if the first slot on the left (Slot 1) contains the sole drive in the enclosure, choose the second slot from the left (Slot 2) for the next drive. It there are disks in Slots 1 and 2, place the next drive in Slot 3, etc.
Please note the following before fastening your non-LaCie hard drive to the drive tray: