Customer Reviews

LaCie 500 GB d2 Extreme External Hard Drive with Triple Interface (300793U)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

This review is concerning 5 (not 1 , but 5 LaCie 500Gb drives) that we purchased for our office, and every single one of them failed. I had called in the first drive that failed, and was actually able to send it in to LaCie. They returned it to me saying that they couldn't reproduce the problem. 3 days later, 2 more of the drives failed in the same way. the drives would make a clicking sound, would have tons of windows delay write failed errors. a few days later, the rest of drives failed, and eventually stopped being recognized by our computers completely, so we decided to just open up the cases and use the drives individually (they are setup in some sort of serial connection to hook up two 250Gb drives, so we bought seperate USB enclosures for the working drive and used them one at a time, and tossed the bad drive.

Whatever the case may be, I think having 5 drives fail the same way tells me that this is very bad product. for $500 ... I think I would question the value for sure! do not buy this... you've been warned.

I purchased this device thru Amazon. After 13 months of good service, the disk failed. LaCie service quotes: "Unfortunately, the drive is past its one-year warranty and we are unable to repair it. We do not perform out-of-warranty repairs. It is usually

more cost effective to purchase a new unit."

$500 for 13 months suggests questionable value.

A company not offering out-of-service repair work is also concerning.

I own four Lacie external hard drives (three 500 GB and one 250 GB). Before you put one or more of these drives in your shopping cart, I suggest you consider the following 1) What is really inside this shiny case? I took a similar drive (the D2 Big Disk Triple Interface) apart when it failed after three years and inside were two 250 GB Western Digital desktop drives. I found out from some tech experts that WD drives are less reliable than some brands (such as top-rated Seagate and Hitachi) because they draw more current which can fry the rather weak bridges made by Lacie. Bridge failure was what happened to my drive. 2) What is the warranty period for this drive? Lacie's warranty period is only one year, while other more reliable drives (again Seagate and Hitachi) have warranties up to five years. Warranties are obviously important, especially for hard drives, and these other manufacturers stand by their products. 3) What sort of support does Lacie give if the drive fails when it is out of warranty? When my drive failed (after only three years of light use), I tested the two WD hard drives inside and they were OK. So I called Lacie to see if the bridge (inside the Lacie case) could be repaired or replaced. They told me that they offered no out-of-warranty service or repairs for any of their hard drives (at any price). They even suggest that I look for replacement parts on eBay! So if it fails, and it's out of warranty, you're out of luck! I now see Lacie as more of a hard drive packager than a hard drive manufacturer, and their support is abysmal. I'll never buy another Lacie drive.

This drive died 8 months after I bought it - I lost all of my content - Lacie's suggestion "buy a 2nd drive!" yeah right - The drive was under warantee when it crashed - but now 6 months after the year warranty, the replacement drive has also crashed.

DO NOT BUY THE LARGER 500 Gig Drives - the bridge between the drives WILL CRASH.

I've gotten some reall good use out of their smaller model drives (knock on wood)

BUT STEER CLEAR OF THIS BIG DRIVE.

Oh and you know your drive is going to crash when the drive starts slowing down and takes 10 minutes just to open.

This drive started off great, but performance has been dropping off and the drive was sluggish. Yesterday it finally failed and all the drive will do is make a clicking sound. Not recommended...

My 4th and final LaCie 250GB, just like this larger one, failed last week. None of them lasted over a year, and one was filled with video files that I had to pay $1,000 to retreive from a pro DATA retreival company! LaCie is simply NOT interested in working out the problems. Never again...

Listen to so many of us here who have been burned. Just don't buy these things!

Recently my second Lacie hard drive of the same type (500GB external FireWire DRIVE) started to fail. It's exactly the same scenario as it was with a first one: clicking sounds for some period of time, than unstable work and finally complete failure. One of my two other smaller 200GB external FireWire Lacie hard drives recently produced a bunch of bad sectors.

If I only new, how bad are your hard drives I never would buy it. They work for a year or two in an average and then break. I'll make sure that as many people I know (mostly programmers and IT specialists) will be notified about unacceptable quality of Lacie hard drives.

Initially, I posted this review, "If you like "Windows Delayed Write - Failed" messages, this drive is for you."

Granted, these messages were initially a problem, but they seem to have disappeared. I have one plugged into a USB port and 2nd unit plugged into the firewire port. (The 3rd is in a safety deposit box off site)

Subdirectories now sync without incident. Since the problem went away on it's own - Lacie has NO SUPPORT to speak of - I don't know who to credit. Perhaps a Windows update fixed the problem; Who knows?

Now that they work, I like having a couple of 500GB drives available to back up my 350GB+ of .avi files. I'd up my rating to 3 stars if permitted to do so by the Amazon site.

My original review follows:

I've got three of these drives and all of them get this message, after which the device drops from view on the PC. I've tried connecting via fire wire and USB 2 and the problem occurs with either. After a reboot, the drive magically reappears and all files copied prior to the occurance of the "Windows Delayed Write - Failed" message are available on the Lacie. Writing back to the hard disk from the Lacies hasn't yet been a problem. Still, If you do frequent large backups, these drives are not for you. You spend way too much time babysitting the back up process.

I never get these messages when I back up to my Western DIgital 120GB USB external drives.

I wouldn't buy another Lacie product until someone at Lacie or Microsoft comes up with an explanation and solution. So far neither company offers either.

My most recently acquired drive gets these messages virtually every time I write to it. This one is still on warranty and I fully intend to return it for a refund. I'll try a competitor's product next.

CAVEAT EMPTOR!!!!

I've just had one of these drives fail after about 1 year. What's the point in buying one to back up your data to when they're more likely to fail than the drive in your computer?

Buy a different type / brand instead. This drive isn't even worth one star

This drive was purchased to store large quantities of static data. First drive failed within 2 months of purchase. Was able to recover portion of data after purchasing additional tools. Had to pay shipping and unit was out of service for 1 month. Five months later another disk failure no ability to recover data. Had to pay shipping to have refurbished unit supplied, again a lag in uptime. After a year of service the drive failed again. Technical support could not even answer whether the unit was under warranty. Very down on Technical support and reliability of product. Disks run very warm and poor heat dissipation is why drives failed. Internal drives had three year warranty if purchased from manufacture. You can not get replacements directly from the manufacture and LaCie does not give you a three year warranty.