Customer Reviews

LaCie d2 External FireWire 7200 RPM 120 GB Hard Drive

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I have been using this drive for more than a year now. It's actually a replacement for the same model, since the first one died on me as a result of OS X's sleep mode feature. In fact, I have had other LaCie drives in the past that never failed. Although I'm aware of the fact that hard drives can fail at any given point in time, a LaCie drive has never failed on me as a result of the company's own manufacturing quality. Having said this, I recommend that while you have any firewire drive (any brand whatsoever) connected to your computer, don't put the CPU to sleep (just the drive and the screen, not the entire system). A short spike in current shoots through the FireWire connection on wakeup, which eventually will damage your external hard drive.

I am very pleased with LaCie. The drive works beautifully for backup and videoediting alike. Also, the company's customer service quickly sent me a replacement drive as the original was still under warranty. Since I don't put my CPU to sleep anymore, no problems with the drive whatsoever. A solid drive at a good price for anyone who needs to rely on their backup data.

I purchased the old LaCie external HD a long time ago with no problems. This year I added the new D2 case when I needed more space.

The aluminum enclosure is very classy. It's small and very quiet. There is no internal fan and power supply, which avoids noise and heat build-up. The case itself dissipates heat from the hard drive. Some people find the external power source a disappointment, which is baffling to me. It helps reduce the extra weight. If there is something wrong with the power supply, then at least you can easily replace it without opening the case. It comes with a very heavy metal stand which one should connect when being used alone. It is not needed when adding to another D2 unit for stacking.

I use these hard drives for DV editing in my Mac. I have never come across with any bad sectors or problems, whatsoever (knock on wood). To be fair, LaCie does not manufacture the hard disks, they only make the [cool] enclosures.

I have to be honest, I was disappointed with their old enclosures which were very much plastic and came with poor quality. I also have an external CD-R/RW from LaCie in the old design and it did not stack up well with my old LaCie hard drive. Moreover, both were very noisy. They were only recommended by professionals, that's why I made the purchase.

Now they solved the problem with these great D2 cases. You won't believe how quiet and sturdy these enclosures are. It looks unbreakable and expensive. A must have especially if you were to own one type of external case.

The other reviews pretty much say what needs to be said about this drive. I will add that the drive works flawlessly with the new Mac OS 10.3 (Panther).

I have an Apple Powerbook with a 12GB hard drive. When I bought the laptop, I had no intention of using it to store music or to edit videos. Up until three months ago, I was still running OS 9.2 Two months ago, I decided that I didn't want to compromise on my home movies, and I certainly didn't want to give up any of the music on my computer.

I purchased this drive, and I have been totally impressed ever since. The drive is quiet, it transfers information quickly, and it's energy control is very efficent.

Unlike other users, I haven't had a need to daisy chain two of these together yet, but it sure wouldn't be a problem. My external CD burner is hooked up to this drive and it works flawlessly.

The LaCie installation was a breeze...no problems at all. I loved it! It worked great for 30 days and then it crashed. It took 3 days before I heard from technical support which gave the standard "mail it to us" speech. I called customer service who offered to have FedEx pick it up at my door; therefore, saving my expense on shipping, but they would not pay for data recovery. The CS rep. kept saying that the warranty states LaCie doesn't pay for data recovery. Would have been nice to see that on the outside of the box instead of on the warranty info on the CD inside the box.

Since the hard drive was brand new, I hadn't had the chance to backup all of my data. I had some work files on the hard drive that I didn't want to lose, but decided it was not worth my expense to have it retrieved and hoped that I would never need it. I decided to contact the Apple store where I bought the LaCie. They were fabulous and did an exchange because I had the original box. (Another good reason to keep the original packing.) They would have refunded my money if I wanted to, but two sales reps. at the store insisted that LaCie was a good product. By the way, Amazon's price is a little cheaper than Apple.

I accept that products will break because sometimes there are lemons; however, a company should immediately offer their services and apologies for something that breaks so quickly after purchase. LaCie's response seemed too rehearsed.

You will notice that some of the negative comments posted show that the hard drive either works great or immediately crashes. You decide what you want to do. I will give them one more try, but I will distrusting for awhile.

It doesn't get any easier. A transparent, reliable and hot-swap by design hard drive that serves any OS that supports the IEE 1394 "firewire" six-pin standard.

Fast, fast, fast backups are what this drive does for my PC, Mac & Linux boxes and laptops.

I would have a hard time beating this drive, but the fine folks at the La Cie designed these drives to permit RAID arrays to be daisy-chained and set up right from the box. Buy five and create your own RAID 5 array. Nothing could be easier to do . . .though RAID 5 was once the private turf of the hardware professionals.

This drive has it all: speed, construction, MTBF (great reputation & warranty), ease of use, ease of implementation and tremendous versatility in supported OS and array formats.

I purchased the 160 GB version of this drive (Iomega mechanism), plugged it in and went to work. The drive spins down on sleep with my iMac, comes back up immediately on hitting any key or moving the mouse, and is quieter than the iMac itself. I read one review by someone who also took a stab at Mac users in general in which it was noted that the Lacie operated hot (it does - the aluminum shell dissipates heat, as intended), and overheated overnight because it wouldn't sleep with the computer. Obviously, this is a Windows problem, not a Lacie problem. Consider the source. Another review mentioned noise - no such problem here (with the Iomega mechanism, anyway). It's also wicked fast, much faster than the Que 80 gig it replaced.

All in all, couldn't be happier.

I work with PCs for a living: when I get home, I use Macintosh for pleasure. Products like the LaCie firewire drives only make my life happier. What can I say about an installation process which consists of:

1) Plug the drive into your Mac's Firewire port;
2) Plug the drive into a surge protector;
3) Turn it on.

Aesthetically, it goes well with my PowerMac; it's slender, with nice curved lines, and it doesn't take up a lot of desktop space. I'd recommend it to any Mac user -- or any PC user with a Firewire port. (If you spent enough money to buy a Firewire-ready PC, you should have bought a Mac anyway... but I digress).

Bottom line -- buy this product. It's some of the most cost-effective, easy-to-implement storage you're likely to find.

I use mine to transfer video footage between a Power Mac G4 and an iMac G3 for use on FInal Cut Pro. It works without a hitch. You don't even have to turn it on because it does it for you when you connect the firewire to your computer. It's solid too. I haven't done it yet, but I bet you could drop it on cement and it would still work. I wouldn't try it either, but I bet it could take it.

I purchased this drive from an Apple store last year. Originally, it had a problem restarting after waking my Powerbook from sleep mode. At first I thought that it was a problem with OS 9, but I decided to contact LaCie's technical support anyway. They told me that some of the first shipment drives had a problem with a faulty board inside the casing. LaCie's tech support arranged to have the drive shipped back and repaired at no cost to me. Within a few days, I had my new drive repaired. It has been working perfectly ever since. When I upgraded to OS 10.2, the drive still worked perfectly. It is very easy to install and it is very fast and reliable. I use it mainly for recording audio, which requires speed and data integrity. The design of the case matches perfectly with my powerbook and is very compact and extremely solid. Although it is very quiet, it does make a soft, high-pitched whine while running, which can pick up in audio recording situations.