Customer Reviews

LaCie 500GB Big Disk Extreme with Triple Interface External Hard Drive ( 300794U )

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Just got off phone with LaCie after a 3rd hard disk failure a few months after warranty expired. Two failures occured during warranty and were replaced. They replaced the physical drives once. They replaced the power cable once. The third time was too late since warranty is only 1 year and this was a 5 months later. Same exact problem. Data disappears then entire disk becomes unusable. Lost all data for 3rd time and none of it was recoverable with many different utilites. LaCie would not do anything even though it was the 3rd failure. I escalated to supervisors to plead for assistance. They said they simply would not assist me since it costs them to diagnose and repair and that the mangufacturers they buy their drives from only give them 1 year warranties (for drives used in enclosures). I verified this as true.

Summary: Really beautful looking drives from a company that came highly recommended. However, I will not buy from them again partly due to poor drive experience but mostly due to their approach to customer service. IMHO, They simply don't have the "put the customer first" philosophy. Had they fixed the drives the 3rd time I still might have given them a chance since they were at least "trying to help". I don't want anyone else to have to go through what I have gone through. I will communicate my experience at local user group meetings I attend as well to help others avoid LaCie drives. So beware.

I have 2 big disks. They have each been replaced twice in the past 8 months. They both just failed again. I am certainly not trusting anymore data with these unreliable things. Possibly they are failing because they get so hot.

I own a couple of maxtors that have been up and running without hassles for 2 years.

I just got off the phone with a very arrogant LaCie tech service representative. This guy acted like he was doing me a favor for fixing their crappy drive after two failures. First time just short of a year and second failure - 2 months after they returned it to me after "fixing it". I explained to him that a drive that fails so readily is fundamentally flawed and there are plenty of people on the web who are going through the same thing I am with this drive. Well he didn't want to hear it and said people write all kinds of things on the internet - as if we're all delusional.

I told him I was not interested in returning the drive again for a third time. It was a problematic drive and most certainly unreliable. I told him that if he had nothing else to offer - he was basically losing a customer. Well - he had nothing else to offer. I'm in search of a new, reliable hard drive. My money down the drain. do yourself a favor and do not buy any LaCie products. LaCie is not interested in keeping their customers satisfied once they got your money.

Avoid Lacie hard disks. They fail very often, and if you're past the one year warranty they will do nothing to help you. Even in warranty they don't do data recovery, they just replace the drive and format it.

I have bought about TEN 500gb Lacie drives. Within two years, I have had all but 1 fail. Several failed within the one year warranty period and were replaced. The replacements failed a few months later.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt and suggested that perhaps they got a bad batch of drives or components. They respond with the standard line about how many drives they sell and how my drives are out of the one year warranty. Essentially, customer service and tech support make no attempt to help. When I mentioned how many bad reviews (all of them) they receive on Amazon, their response is that only people with problems write reviews anyway. These are all canned lines taught to customer service.

So, I figured I'd add my .02 and warn any one even thinking of buying a Lacie drive to stay away if you care at all about your data.

I have had 10 Lacie 500gb drives. Everyone of them, except one, has failed within 2 years. Some in less than one year. And they are rarely used. Just mounted for backup and ejected and turned off. These drives are unreliable. Customer service and tech support do NOT stand behind the customer, and expect you to treat their drives like disposable razors. Only they cost several hundred dollars. If you get a year out of them, you're one of the lucky ones. I wish this review space allowed for 0 stars. That would be my rating.

This is a very slick looking drive but it's a POS. Good thing I didn't have to spend a penny buying this drive because the company paid for it. About 2 years ago, 500GB drives did not exist so instead LaCie decided to use RAID 0 2 x 250GB to get the 500GB capacity. BAD idea! Great for performance but you have zero redunancy. The fact that it only takes 1 drive to fail to lose all your data is highly risky to put any important files in it. Buy an external drive with 1 drive only or one that offers RAID 1 or RAID 5. You will be at less risk of losing your data if one of the drive goes bad.

I had the same experience as others here. The drive worked OK but died completely about 15 months out. La Cie claims it's more expensive to fix it than to replace it...so I will replace it, but not with one of theirs.

After 18 months at time the har drive make strange noises and its innaccesible. I have to unplug the power cord and plug it again for it to come back for a while. but after a couple of hour the same thing happens.

Terrible product stay away from it

Mine crashed within one year but I did not complain until the 14th month. LaCie said no warranty after one year and the cost to repair, as I offered to pay for repair, was as great as buying a new product. Apparently, the life expectancy is one year. LaCie does not advertise this limitation as far as I know.