Customer Reviews

LaCie 250GB d2 External Hard Drive Extreme USB 2.0 and FireWire 400/800 Interfaces (300790U)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I have 4 other Lacie external hard drives ranging from 160 to 300 GB's. I've had no problem with any them. I even like they way they look! So when the need arose I got another one, the newly configured 250 GB 2d listed here at Amazon.

I'm extremely disappointed in this drive because it won't go to sleep. My other Lacies all do, but this one goes to sleep for about 30 seconds and then wakes up again and stays awake unless my Mac G5 is shut down completely.

I exchanged several emails with Lacie tech support and after trying several fixes (even running it on an older G4 Mac) I was eventually told to return the drive to Amazon. I did and they quickly sent me another (thank you Amazon). But alas, the new drive had exactly the same problem. I sent Lacie tech support an email saying I thought the new configuration (it has a different port arrangement on the back) has a design flaw. No response.

So what, if it won't go to sleep? Well, with newer Macs (I'm not sure about PC's) you seldom shut down completely, you just put your MAC to sleep. Saves energy, screen life, and ware and tear on your hard drive (because they spin down). But since this new Lacie won't spin down in the sleep mode it will probably wear out faster and the failure of a hard drive and resulting data loss is certainly traumatic. That's why I gave this new Lacie 250 GB 2d a single star. It will jeopardize my hard drive contents, something any drive manufacturer should go out of their way to prevent.

The LaCie d2 250GB external drive DIED less than 24 hours after I got it! I edit video on a Mac, and had loaded approximately 40GB of footage onto the new drive before shutting down for the night. The next morning when I turned everything back on, the LaCie d2 made a modest "click" sound and became a useless $200 paperweight.

*edit*
LaCie's tech support e-mailed me within about 6 hours to suggest a few things I could try, none of which worked. While no contact numbers for LaCie come with the actual product, I was able to find a customer service number via their website. I'm relieved to say I was connected right away with a human being, and the person I spoke to was really helpful in guiding me through their defective returns procedure. I was not charged for shipping the item back, nor was I responsible for insuring the package. I also should note, at no time did LaCie push me to exchange rather than refund my money. THAT is rare these days.

*edit*
The drive shipped quickly back to LaCie, and they refunded my money in exactly 7 business days. In fact, the only downside to the whole experience was the product itself.

Warning: After upgrading to Mac 0S to 10.4.6, both my Lacie 250 GB drives failed to mount. System profiler and Disk Utilities show both the drives--after fixing permissions and running disk fix utility, the problem still would not go away. I called Lacie Support and they told me that the drives needed to be reformatted. Since I couldn't afford to lose ANY data, that was not an option. The drives did have the latest firmware. I looked through some online forums: 1. Other people did have this issue but apparently if you disconnect the drives from the Mac BEFORE updating the OS, there shouldn't be a problem. If I were you I still would not want to try that. 2. Some said try connecting using USB2. It didn't work for me.

I later figured that it was the OS upgrade that was causing the problems. I had the luxury to connect the drives to OS 9 machine. Luckily, the drives mounted fine. I also tested on the OS 10.3 system and it was fine. So, I had to back up the data to another computer and reformat the drives on OS 10.4.6.

So, if you run into the same problem, find a computer with previous version Mac OS (apparently Windows XP works) to hook up the drives.

I've been using Lacies for many years. I like the price. Out of 7 Lacie drives I own, 1 failed (died) and then these 2, 250GB drives won't mount after installing Mac OS 10.4.6. It IS kind of risky to have problems like these. I may get another brand of external HD next time.

I bought a 250gb LaCie d2, not through Amazon, but through another retailer. I spent several months ripping my music collection. Now after less than 1 year of ownship, it refuses to mount on my Mac. 3 interfaces are not much use, when none of them work.
I'm stuck with an expensive hunk of metal and no way to get at my digital music.
I've looked around the web and it turns out this is a fairly common problem with this brand. There has got to be a more reliable hard drive out there, keep looking.
UPDATE: To be fair I should post an update that I sent the drive back to LaCie (at my expense), they fixed it and sent it back to me (at their expense). It has been trouble-free for 3 months now. When it's working, it's a 5-star product.

I work at a design studio that bought about 10 of these drives over the past year or two. We we're seduced by the nice box design. They look great but they usually last about a year or less. We have lost more data due to LaCie equipment than anything else we own. I use one at home for music. I thought maybe the failure rate was due to multiple users, being passed around, overall misuse. Not the case unfortunately. Today, for the second time in three months, my LaCie 250gig external harddrive failed. This time it just died. No disc utility could repair it, just tick tick tick. It hasn't been moved, it is very well ventilated and very well taken care of. This disc sits on a shelf above my stereo and is used 3-4 evenings a week to listen to background music. Very light use. Seeing the same drives die frequently at work, I backed everything up to a 6 year old EzQuest drive that has never failed me. If I hadn't done this I would have lost around 200 gigs of music. In the past LaCie was known as the cheesy, cheap, bad alternative to other more expensive brands. Seems like the only thing they changed was their marketing. This is a low quality product / brand. Don't be seduced by the handsome box design, the reliability is terrible and the warranty is about half as long as other manufacturers... makes you wonder why.

I have had this drive for 13 months and used it only for periodic, offsite backups of critical information. Consequently, I used it for less than five hours over the period. The drive started to make an ungodly noise whenever it idled. The LaCie support answer, via email, was not helpful at all. Their first response was, "It could be the power source. If you don't have another one, buy one from us for $20.00." Luckily, I had another one, which did not fix the problem. The LaCie response, "We don't repair drives. Buy a new one." I am left with a $180 dollar doorstop and a resolve to never purchase another LaCie product.

I haven't experience any of the issues the others have. I've had 3 250 GB LaCie d2 drives and they've all been great. I use them heavily for video editing and pushing 10-20 GB files. No problems.

The only issue I ever had was with an old Mac and the 500 GB LaCie drive ... probably a FireWire issue. I've had much better luck with LaCie than Mercury. One note of caution for people who have had issues: software upgrades and firmware issues are very common, especially with Firewire, and I've gotten into the habit of always shutting down before adding a drive and unmounting a drive before removing it, even though Firewire is hot-swappable, I've had external FW devices blow up trying to hot-swap.

I'm a fan of LaCie. It could look like a baked potato and I'd still use it.

I've never experienced the former reviewers unfortunate issues with this LaCie Drive. I've owned one of these for two years, and Im a heavy user - 10 hours a day. I edit lots of video and have 30GB of music on here that I play throughout each day using I Tunes. never a glitch, never a problem. I've used SeaGate external drives and those are great too, but I have had a few problems with those. Im so far a big LaCie fan and Im buying another one soon.

I am a videographer and have purchased 4 of these drives over time. I'm done with LaCie. Two failed after a year and the two remaining are failing now, clicking and clacking and regularly unmounting themselves. They look great! ... designed by a famous guy, but what's inside should last longer than a year!

LaCie knows it, and didn't want to look at my failed drives at all. After all, they outlasted the warantee, and that was all that was needed for them.

I ended up with some from Mercury (Elite Firewire 800 Pro). They are about the same price, don't look near as good, and work great!

Respectfully submitted

This is the third, and last LaCie drive I will ever own. My first one failed, and unfortunately I had already bought my two others before they also failed. In the end, all three drives that I bought from LaCie have failed. If you do decide to buy one, you might as well get two and use one for backup because it's only a matter of time, just read through some message boards.