LaCie (LAC300871) 500GB Fire Wire Big Disk
1 No problems on a Mac
I've been using the 500 GB drive for the last 6 months to back up files and swap files between 3 different Mac's: a 1.25 Ghz 15 inch G4 powerbook, a dual 1Ghz G4, and a dual 2Ghz G5. Using OX 10.3 on all machines. I've had no problems at all. I use the firewire 800 interface.
2 I cant get LaCie to tell me
Where to send the drive for repair under warranty... I could not see any address or number to call in their site, nor in the warranty papers attached to the drive...And a return number is needed...
My warranty espires soon, and there is a risk of losing it if I cant ship it on time..
Can any one help me please?
Thanks
yuval@mivzak.com
3 A programmer's perspective...
It's alarming to see a Lacie rep posted a 5 star review of their own product here. I was going to refrain from adding my own negative experience, but this is infuriating.
I purchased the Lacie 500GB drive approximately 1 month before SP2 came out. Upon SP2's release, the drive repeatedly failed. Lacie's customer service works like this: (A) you send them a detailed technical note, explaining all you've done to test the drive, all the evidence supporting what the problems are, etc., and (B) they reply exactly 72 hours later with dumbed down form question and suggestions. (A) you reply 5 minutes later with accurate, constructive responses. Guess what? (B) they reply 72 hours later, again, with more bad questions and form suggestions. All said, I spent over 1 week with them, with no progress made.
Personally, I'm a software developer and I am sensitive to the difficulty of programming for hardware that might have a changing context [like an upgraded OS]. However, there's no technical reason why Lacie couldn't quickly have rolled out a firmware update that worked in SP2. Their failure to design a device that could be updated using a standard USB (U=universal!) interface suggests a lack of foresight. When this happened, they should've volunteered to pay shipping both ways and fix the devices.
As for the rep's expectation that purchasers of the drive should monitor press releases, that's crazy. I read all kinds of tech publications - online and off - and I caught no wind of the issue.
I can accept the fact that one day the drive didn't work. I can't accept that their website didn't offer a quick solution.
Ultimately I switched to Maxtor and will never switch back.
4 No trouble at all
Using external drives (USB) for a long time and connected this one via FW800 on an XP machine. Super fast and quiet. No problem moving large chunks of data (10 GB or more at times). Using it mainly for video editing and erasing very frequently. 99.99% of the times it just finishes the job, no hang ups or other errors. I believe moving large amount of data, FW is the preferred way over USB.
Would like to upgrade to 1.6TB in the near future. Good job LaCie!
5 Con.
Lacie are getting the wrong end of the stick from me. The fact that this company refuses to update drivers for old hardware for new versions of an OS is simply a farce in this day and age.
Lacie refuse to develop drivers to support a new OS or even an update. Back in the days of NT they would not even bring out Win2k support for the systems. When XP arrived most of their hardware the year before was simply left to dry up with age.
In short if you buy Lacie then it will only perform to your current system specs. Any changes to the OS and chances are you will be shelling out more doe for new hardware.
CON.
6 Let's Place Things in Perspective
1. LaCie does not send emails to customers regarding updates. Instead, we post detailed information on our website when the information is available.
2. We acknowledged the XP SP2 problem when SP2 was released, and sent a press release that had wide distribution worldwide.
3. All drives manufactured after September 1, 2004 already incorporate the fix for XP SP2; no need to perform update on drives purchased since then.
4. As the issue with XP SP2 prevents proper operation with older drives, not possible to make the updater work on PCs already updated to XP SP2. Must use XP SP1 PC or Mac running OS X to update firmware of older drives. Alternative is to contact LaCie and return drive to LaCie for updating.
5. As for data corruption, no, it is not normal to require a reformat after every shutdown or restart. This points to other issues with your system.
If customers are experiencing a problem, do contact our tech support department. They are there to help you.
This drive is very popular with LaCie customers, and is an reliable product for the majority of them.
Mike
7 Fast, quiet, roomy, built like a tank, no problem on a Mac
I'm sorry to hear of all the problems Windows users had with this machine. But it sure sounds like the problem is Windows, not the drive. With my 17" Mac PowerBook, I've been using it for 3 months, following two 120GB's in the similar form factor, which I also still enjoy. I partitioned it into 4 drives, using each for different purposes, and have had zero problems. I love hot-unplugging the one Firewire cable and having it power itself down, and v.v., plugging it in and having it power up and mount itself. Best drive I've owned in 20 years.
8 Frustrated by its reliability
My work got this Lacie d2 exteranl drive for data storage. The Mac G4 (OS X, 10.2) was able to recognize it at the first mounting. But when I tried to create a folder on it, it mysteriously dropped from the desktop. From then on, I have to reformat it each time I want to mount this hard drive; otherwise, the Macs will not recognize it! So basically, I lost all my data each time I tried to use this hard drive! Now I dare not to put any data on it now!
9 Reliability and recoverability concerns
I question this drive's reliability.
This drive achieves its capacity by hooking two disk drives in tandem and making them appear as one drive. When the 320GB version of this item, which I bought less than a year ago, ground to a halt during a disk write, the two-drive design complicated my attempts to recover data.
Here's what happened: When my 320GB LaCie crashed, LaCie claimed that the problem was incompatibility with Windows XP's latest service pack. At their recommendation, I downloaded software from their web site that was supposed to update the drive's firmware. The software couldn't see the disk, and wouldn't install the firmware upgrade. LaCie said I should run the software on a computer without Win XP. I tried that, but the software still couldn't see the disk. Maybe, I thought, that was because the disk was already toast.
LaCie offered to fix or replace the drive under the warrantee, but they would not attempt to recover or preserve data. I decided to hold off sending it to them and use grc.com's Spinrite to try to recover data. I removed the drives from the case, possibly invalidating the warrantee, and connected them to the motherboard of a spare computer. Spinrite warned me that the disk was operating out of spec. As it proceeded, it found numerous bad sectors, which it is attempting to recover. It's been running now for two weeks!
Just before the 320GB unit crashed, I had bought a second LaCie unit, this d2 BigDisk 500GB Extreme model. I tried doing the firmware upgrade on that unit, using both WinXP and Win2000 computers. No success. The software couldn't see the disk. Is LaCie's upgrade software really any good?
This new unit occasionally freezes during disk writes, causing the loss of portions of the file being written. The 320GB unit did that, too, but I didn't heed the warning. Now I'm afraid to store anything on this 500GB unit that I wouldn't want to lose.
At work, we've been using Maxtor units. No problems have appeared with them.
10 Ditto: Chokes on SP2
I had the same experience as Randy. After updating Windows XP Home to SP2, none of my computers would mount my LaCie Big Disks using Firewire 400. They would mount using USB 2.0, but had intermittent problems mounting during system boot-up. None of my three computers running SP2 would run the LaCie firware updater properly. I drove 50 miles to the home of the only friend I could find who was still running SP1. The firmware update said it worked using his SP1 machine, but the drives still would not mount using Firewire. I ended up sending the drives to LaCie. LaCie claims that they found nothing wrong with the drives, but they now work. So far, the LaCie support web site stil has no firware updater that works on a SP2 machine.
11 Chokes on Win XP SP2, customer service is lacking
Although I'm a registered user and LaCie has my e-mail address, they did NOT notify me that the drive is not compatible with Win XP SP2 -- I had to find out the hard way. I have to return the drive in order for them to upgrade the firmware (their field upgrade failed on three different machines), and they won't do a swap where they send me a replacement first -- so I have to find a way to back this whole thing up before I return it. A big pain that they could have avoided with a single, simple e-mail -- but they don't do this as a matter of policy (per their support staff). Ugh. Thanks for nothing, LaCie.
