Customer Reviews

LaCie 301439U 640GB Little Big Disk Quadra Hard Drive

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This drive has now been in use for several months as backup for my system. The Little Big Disk Quadra's small physical size, holding 500 GB disk space, is perfect for my needs, and works so well I ordered another for off-site storage.

I am using this drive as an eSATA backup for an office PC with critical files using Norton Ghost v14. Daily and system backups are speedy and painless. Wish the supplied eSATA cable was longer. Setup was a no-brainer.

I've used a number of LaCie drives over the years. The drives have proven reliable. The power supplies less so. The customer service, mediocre.

I had two 500GB Big Disks in service and both of their power supplies failed. It took a while to identify the problem, at first I thought I was sunk with two drives out of commission. I have everything on a 1500 AMP UPS, it's a backup and power conditioner, so I know that wasn't the problem. The drives would power up, but the light would flash and my computers would never recognize the drives. Eventually I found some postings on the net about power supply failures with those symptoms.

After several calls and emails I found somebody at LaCie who sent me replacement power supplies even through the ones I had were out of warranty. LaCie does not recognize their failure as a common problem, so they have not issued a recall or extended the warranty. However, there are dozens of people complaining about it on various sites.

Upon receipt of the two replacements, one failed within two weeks. Same issues as before. They were slightly different bricks, bigger, but same cords. The other has been working fine for about 4 months, and I'm going to return the broken one while it's under warranty for a replacement.

All in all, I like LaCie drives but the power supply issue would keep me from buying another. Depending on the importance of what you're storing on the drives, I would say these are a good buy but beware or at least be prepared to not have access for a week while you wait for a power supply replacement.

This firewire 800 Lacie external drive has two 250GB drives which provide excellent performance. It is used on our media center Apple Mac Mini and is extremely quite since it doesn't use a fan for cooling. Very pleased with the purchase.

I own three of these. They all take their power from the firewire 800 port (daisy-chained) on my MacBook Pro (Aluminum). Fast, silent, very compact.

Far faster than a traditional firewire or usb 2.0 drives. As far as I know this is the only bus powered raid. It uses raid 0 . It does not have mirroring capabilities. Using firewire 800 it is very fast.I have the 320gb version of this unit.