Comments on: LaCie Drives are Crap, Crap, Crap

By: KENTON STUDIOS

KENTON STUDIOS — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 10:09:12 +0000

YES. My RAID QUADRA was a total disappointment. NEVER AGAIN will I buy LACIE. 3 TIMES in 2 years, I loose everything. This time in a RAID 5 format, 1 drive goes faulty… simply stick in a new drive and it is find and should reformat to keep all files in tact. NOPE. They had cheap HITACHI’s installed and sent new drive but they way things are set up if it is not the exact same make and model… you loose everything. SO again. My stuff is toast. After $100 of shipping the console 2x and 2x for chords and harddrives… what a waste. MAC STATION shame on your for selling it! Apple… why do you promote it?

By: Omer

Omer — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:38:29 +0000

My 500 Gb Lacie just died on me. My i-Mac does not recognize it anymore. I was using it as back-up drive (Time Machine) now I have started to use another one but having the security of a time machine for older files I might have deleted is now gone ( Lacie is really crap ! I will never ever buy another one and I recommend others not to do the same mistake as I….

By: Trinzini

Trinzini — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:04:34 +0000

Further to my previous post, I also have a small USB enclosure from Daiwoo, no less, that I picked up from a local surplus jobber for $13. (Leatherette case included) I put an old IDE Laptop drive in it and it has been working flawlessly for 2 or 3 years. Very small, takes power from 2 USB ports if needed with a special cable or can connect an external p/s to it. Can be seen and works flawlessly on EVERY machine I have tried it on.

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

By: Trinzini

Trinzini — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:48:58 +0000

I, like many others, have had a 500G LaCie USB drive go bad 3 times. Out of the box it was unreliable. Sometimes seen most times not. LaCie blamed power supply – replaced under warranty. Still same problem. Sent in and replaced the Seagate drive with a Fujitsu. Worked for a while. Very few on time hours as I use it at client’s to transfer data. Two days ago, worked fine – today can’t be seen on any of my machines.

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

By: poppasmurf

poppasmurf — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:07:48 +0000

Hi again if my terminolgy above post is incorrect then im sorry.

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

By: poppasmurf

poppasmurf — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:01:47 +0000

There are two issues with LACIE the ac power supply bricks are usually rubbish and dont last and the bridge board inside the one with connectors from IDE to firewire usb etc.. these also fail.

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.

By: daemeon

daemeon — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:12:27 +0000

I have had extensive opportunities to evaluate & repair both good & dead external USB & firewire disks. There is a serious problem with La Cie Firewire interfaces (I have now looked into over 30 just since I started asking around). Further, there are only two or three (so I have been told) makers of the firewire chips, most use the same vendors. The problem appears to be worst on PowerMac G5 and iMacs. Interesting to me is that I have not run into anyone yet who has had a failure on a laptop!

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 …

By: ace

ace — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:40:49 +0000

Is there a way to use AC adapter from a different vendor (in my case the lacie ac adapter is faulty and I think that buying a lacie spare part will result in another faulty ac adapter ….).

Thank in advance.

By: A.

A. — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:56:34 +0000

I have purchased 3 or 4 Lacie Hard Disk extreme drives. ALL of them have died within a year of purchase. ALL. Lacie drives are indeed garbage.

By: Carl

Carl — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:00:12 +0000

Thomas. A client of mine just asked for help on her two 1TB Big Disks. The drive would not mount, nor show up on her mac. I checked the “blocK’ power supply, that was OK. Then opened the case and powered the drives by another supply source, they were OK. Failure was a regulator board in the case. SYmptom was drive not mounting and the blue on button just blinking, blinking.

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