Customer Reviews

LaCie 500 GB Big Disk External Hard Drive with USB 2.0 Interface ( 300964U )

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I have used a few of these drives for about a year. While they provide a lot of storage for the money, they have proven unreliable and very prone to data loss and crashes. Files get corrupted or disappear at random intervals. It appears to be due to poor cooling; they overheat after an hour or two of use and then become erratic, even when operated in well-ventilated and open areas. The only solution to keeping semi-reliable operation is installation of a large external fan blowing directly on the drives. While this works, it is a terrible kludge and indicates very poor product design. Mr Porsche may design fine cars but he apparently has no ability to design reliable computer peripherals.

Similar overheating and unreliability problems plague the 1 tb drives sold by LaCie.

The drives also do not spin down after a period of inactivity as do most other competing drives.

If you want durable, reliable storage I recommend you avoid these drives and go with other manufacturers.

Paid about $420 USD for a lacie drive a little over a year ago. While it was reliable (until about 10 months into ownership) it was fine, then I had recurring problems. I won't be buying another Lacie drive.
It's fast, but it failed very early in its life for a 'superior' (read "expensive") brand.
Drives will fail, it's a fact of life. Might as well buy 2 cheaper drives and backup one to another.

My company bought 4 of these drives. Within a year all 4 were having read/write errors or completely dead. When we complained to Lacie they said we were out of warrantee and didn't offer any help at all, not even an apology.

A friend of mine who had 3 Lacie drives had 2 of the 3 fail.

Stay away from Lacie. I will never buy anything again from this company, I'm surprised they are still in business.

I purchased two LaCie 500 GB Big Disks (external, USB), only to figure out one of the drives actually crashes my PC on reboot (the other drive does not, so this is obviously a flaw in the first one). Having been convinced (somewhat) by LaCie's support monkeys that this *just might* be the fault of my PC, I let it slide for a while, but after I bought a completely new PC (new motherboard, absolutely no parts in common with the old PC) and noticed that the LaCie drive crashed my new PC on reboot as well, it became obvious that the LaCie drive was the culprit.

So I figured, the drive is still under warranty (they give you an extremely short 1-year manufacturer's warranty), no problem. I'll just ask LaCie to replace the drive.

No such luck. To make a long story short, after wasting countless hours dealing with LaCie's "customer service" department, I came to the realization that LaCie has the worst customer service department (policy? culture? call it what you will) I have ever had the misfortune to experience.

The customer service guy was abusive on the phone and failed to respond to e-mail as promised. Although he started out reasonable enough, recognizing the fact that the hard drive must be defective (crashing multiple PCs that have no problem with another drive of the exact same model is a major clue), during a subsequent phone call (after he ignored my e-mail for two weeks) he put me on hold to "talk to a supervisor" for about 30 minutes. I don't know what his supervisor told him, but after this point, his attitude was completely different. His initially reasonable tone was replaced with one of arrogance and obfuscation. Maybe his supervisor reminded him of LaCie's policy of "blaming the customer" for their product's defects?

He even suggested that I deal with the defective drive by "eBaying it". Wow. So instead of sending out a replacement, non-crashing drive, LaCie expects its customers to foist their defective products off on other unsuspecting consumers? Is this the state of customer support in the industry today? Really?

How about recalling the LaCie 500 GB Big Disk, LaCie? It would probably cost more in the short term than blaming the customer, but you might redeem your reputation in the long run.

Now I'm down $400 for the drive, plus about $3,000 worth of my time, with a crashing hard disk to show for my pain and effort. LaCie, you've stolen another customer's hard-earned money, but never again! Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, anyone but LaCie, congratulations, you've got my business.

I have to agree, and underscore the experience of others on this one. I purchased two LaCie 500GB drives at the same time, new - about 800 bucks then (they are much less expensive now).

They started failing quickly when I did a lot of data moving onto them. I updated the firmware as specified (which trashed my ability to connect to some USB devices even though I was using Firewire).

The drives were getting hot. I called LaCie. I told them that obviously, some kind of fan must be needed. They said that the drives are designed to run normally in that little box. Two drives - no fan, no good heat sinks.

So, then they failed completely, with sickening little clicking noises inside, the sound of a heat-damaged drive with a bad board on it. The first couple of days before I started doing a lot of transfers, things seemed fine enough, but problems started.

If I got paid the purchase price for the time doing chkdsks and recovery between cool-downs and barely getting back my data before a full crash, I'd be getting less than minimum wage. But this was worse - I paid the money and lost the time, and a bit of data too.

A mess all the way, and a waste of good money - lots of money for nothing! For the same money, I added a RAID 0/1/5/10 hot swap to my computer, which has SATAII and a large fan on the back to keep things really cool. More storage, more performance, and no more problems under the most demanding use.

If you value your time, your money and your data - avoid the 500GB Big Disk!!!

Had drive for 4mnths and started having issues - overheating, write failures etc. Trying to get Lacie to fix/replace wish me luck

avoid this product

I used my big disk for several months and then it started slowly deteriorating and losing chunks of data. Huge waste of money. Huge waste of time. Huge loss of data.

Upon installing this drive it did not show up in windows at all and I had to go to lacie's web site to download a driver (none was included in the box).

I also occasionally had the drive just stop responding (resulting in data loss from programs attempting to write to it). I had to reboot the drive using the power switch on it in order for it to come back. This has also caused DVD burns to fail midway through. Only after checking their website again did I find that you HAVE to plug the drive directly into the computer. A hub can result in losing the drive in windows.

So far, after plugging it directly into the computer, it seems to be working flawlessly.

I recently had a 200GB LaCie Big Disk die at work after relatively light use. Then I remembered that I had a 250 model in the same series die at home about a year ago. The wheels started turning: I had a 500GB LaCie Big Disk at home, seldom used and only as a backup. But recently I had used it as a capture disk for a client video project. Then I remembered to look up the item online to see what others were saying. After reading the previous reviews here, alarm bells went off. I immediately began copying files from the LaCie to an internal drive hours ago. And sure enough, just like another reviewer said: corrupted, unreadable files that could not be copied. Luckily, nothing irreplaceable. But LaCie, your products need work.

I guess I must be lucky, because I have used one of these drives for almost a year now without any problems. It's only drawback is that it is BIG. But then they tell you that up front. Mine installed easily and has worked well. It has a nice power switch on the front which is convenient. I use mine flat (not upright) and it is quiet and seems fast. No trouble so far, so no complaints.

I give it 4 star because it is well built (metal, heavy), quiet, well designed and has functioned flawlessly so far. And it's fast for a USB drive.

I also have about 6 of the Lacie Porche style 250 GB Drives and one porche style 500 and they have worked well also. No problems. Not sure why so many people have had trouble.

I keep mine on all the time I am using my computer (it turns on and off automatically), it gets warm, but not hot. I make sure it has free airflow.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but so far, so good.