Point being, if a cheap basically no-name enclosure can work so well, what’s LaCie’s problem???

One of my clients has a drawer full and a shelf full of LaCie drives of various types and sizes – ALL dead for one reason or another. They are an advertising agency and store lots of artwork etc. They have sworn to NEVER use LaCie products again!

As I said, LaCie, your internal stats CAN say, and I imagine DO say whatever you want them to, but the real world experience on the street indicates something very different.

The others posting here are not wrong. They are also correct in that if out of warranty, forget LaCie, just take the drives out (assuming they’re still OK) and put them in a new enclosure, or internally in a computer, format them and the drives will be fine.

That’s my rant. Enjoy

Fred

I have many clients who have had the unpleasant experience of purchasing LaCie drives and ALL have failed. ALL within warranty and many more than once!

I had numerous e-mail exchanges with high ups at LaCie and they just don’t get it. Their attitude toward customer service from top down seems to be that of not giving a damn. The Canadian President quoted all these stats showing theirs are top quality, low failure rate products. I countered with my disappointment with the state of the industry if his stats are true and with my ‘man on the street’ experience, to no avail.

I have since purchased an external USB (SATA) enclosure from NexStar-3 (Vantec) and transfered the 500G drive into it and reformatted and have no problems.

I also have an older NexStar-3 USB (IDE) enclosure that I use for reclaiming data from drives and I move drives in and out of it all the time – never a problem

So, LaCie, get with it, listen to what your one-time, no-repeat customers are telling you and put some form of quality control in place or eventually (hopefully) you’ll go out of business.

My personal view, If you can’t put out a quality product, don’t put one out at all! Save us the trouble.

Fred

But I do (think I) know what im doing.

My power supply unit broke and this version is now obselete so anyone with an under 320GB drive will have to use the 57Watt one instead of the 26.6Watt or 34Watt it came with… I’ve got a SATA 2,5″ Fujitsu awaiting data transfer before I remove the LaCie drive for good and put it inside my MAC.

If you have a desktop system then my suggestion is to remove the HDD and connect the IDe drive in there, should work perfectly, as again the bridge boards used can be faulty.
The hard drive is usually perfect as they are not made by Lacie all LaCie do is repackage other manufacturers hard drives.

So two things LaCie can improve on product testing and customer service at least get a helper that knows what they are talking about.

This smells (pun intended) like brownout related power supply problems from the public utility (I have a box of good La Cie power supplies, as well as a few bad ones). I also have a huge pile of iMacs and a couple of G5’s with bad power supplies, am seeing the same problems on PC tower power supplies.

What is curious is that I (at home) have never had a system fried but I have been using UPS’s on my systems for 20 years! I am curious, do you use a battery backup type UPS? Specifically one that does always-on power conditioning like from APC, Best, or whomever?

I even wonder if La Cie (or Maxtor or Seagate) even realize that this could be a brownout problem …

Thank in advance.

ANother item was they used Seagate HDs. Seagate had been having some difficulty also and have posted a firmware updater as a fix.

Opened: 8/21/07 12:00 AM
Last Updated: 9/15/07 12:00 AM

Products

* 250GB LaCie ETHERNET DISK MINI 10/100 – USA RECON
Item Number (SKU): 300938UR
Serial Number: 161080B710

Problem description:
250GB E mini disk – power went dead, pwr supply OK
Robert P.

Purchased refurb drive 11/20/2006 direct from LaCie. Drive has been running fine but began making noise in the last two months. Noise sounded more like power supply whine than drive whine but I could not be certain.

Have measured power supply output cable connector and on pins on the circuit board directly at power connector. 5Vdc & 12Vdc appear fine in both places.

Pressing on/off switch produces no noticable result anywhere (no fan or drive spin, etc.) except that the LED on the power switch board flashes on for a fraction of a second. It does this each time the power button is pushed. That is all that happens.

Please advise. I am very capable of installing a new main board or any other part myself. Do I need to ship in the drive or can you ship me a part. robert@irpworks.org 806-791-3923

——————————————–

Posted: August 22, 2007 @ 12:00 AM
Hello Robert,

Thank you for contacting LaCie Tech Support.

Unfortunately your device is beyond its warranty period and we are unable to repair it. LaCie will repair products through their warranty period but we do not offer out-of-warranty service.

LaCie does not sell loose components or Empty enclosures.

Sincerely.
———————————————————–

Robert P.
Posted: August 22, 2007 @ 12:00 AM
You mean you will sell me a refurb product but will not provide repair services? I did not imply that I expected free warranty repair. Do you not have an obligation to either offer repair or parts for repair? There is no ship-in bench repair available from you? Please advise as this sounds rather impossible after my 24 years in the PC biz.

Dion

——————————————————-
Posted: August 23, 2007 @ 12:00 AM
Well You bought it in Nov. 2006 had a 3 month warranty. It’s now Aug. 2007. There is nothing else i can do.

Sincerely.
——————————————————

Robert P.
Posted: August 23, 2007 @ 12:00 AM
That makes no sense. A Warranty is only a promise of free repair. I am not asking for FREE repair. I find it unbelievable that your firm does not offer repair services for products it sells. How am I to get the data off of the drive? This would be like Ford saying that because the car is out of warranty, you cannot have it repaired. I’ve never heard of such a things.
—————————————————–
Dion

Posted: August 24, 2007 @ 12:00 AM
We do not offer repair outside the warranty, because it is just as expensive as buying a new drive. You can remove the drive out of the enclosure and install in a computer to retrieve data. (Unless it was set to EXT3 instead of FAT32).

Sincerely.

LaCie Support
——————————————————
Posted: September 14, 2007 @ 12:00 AM
If your issue was resolved please check the “My question has been answered. (Close)” box and click the “Add Reply” button.

Unless you post a response, your ticket will be closed one week from today. We look forward to hearing from you!

Best regards,
LaCie Technical Support Team
——————————————————-
Robert P.
Posted: September 15, 2007 @ 12:00 AM
It HAS NOT been resolved. I am not attempting to read the drive in another machine. It sees the drive but does not recognize it as having been formated. Suggestions?

Recently, I bought a Venus T4U 4-bay external USB drive enclosure (which has a fan, you might want to check that idea out LaCie) and put 4 250GB drives in it. So far, it’s working great, though it seems a bit slower than the LaCie FW800 (when the Lacie bothers to actually work, that is).