Customer Reviews

LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk 1 TB eSATA/FireWire800/FireWire400/USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 301442U (Aluminum)

5 star:		(163)
4 star:		(50)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(70)

 

 

This is a newer version of an earlier model that is very similar (LaCie 301827U d2 Quadra 1 TB eSATA/FireWire800/FireWire400/USB 2.0 External Hard Disk). I talked to a salesman at J&R Computers and he told me the only difference is that this model has 32MB cache and the older model has 16MB cache. The older model has over 100 reviews so you may want to look there as well.

COST:

This costs more than some other external hard drives of the same capacity but there are good reasons: You are paying for the multiple interfaces (eSATA, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 with second daisy-chain port, USB 2.0) and the complete set of cables that come with it. The eSATA support is 3Gbits compared to 1.5Gbits for less expensive drives. The well-constructed case may also add some cost. I'd like to think that the included disk is of a higher quality too, but have no way to judge.

PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS:

The drive has been working fine for about a month now.

It feels VERY sturdy. It is heavier than other external drives I am familiar with.

It is only slightly warm to the touch when running. The all-metal construction with the exterior ridges seems to do a good job of keeping it cool.

It is VERY quiet. If not for the blue light I couldn't tell that it was turned on. Even when I put my ear right next to it I can hear very little. Even when it is actively seeking it is basically silent. There is no fan.

It does make a few noises when starting up or shutting down. I THINK one of the noises I hear is the heads parking and unparking.

I am using it as a USB 2.0 device right now. I have an eSATA card on order and will update this review to let you know how that goes. UPDATE: The drive works just fine when connected via eSATA. I have not done any performance experiments.

It does have a slot in the back for one of those Kensington cable locks. I didn't see this mentioned in the sales literature, although other external drive manufacturers make a big deal of it. There are a lot of those locks available, especially if you consider the clones. The following is probably the best: Kensington 64343 MicroSaver DS Notebook Computer Lock with Keys (PC/Mac).

Oh, yes, one more thing. The blue light reminds me of HAL in 2001 Space Odyssey, except that HAL had a red eye.

UPDATE 15 Sep 2010:
There are a number of reviews mentioning power supply failures, and I don't want to deny that there is a problem here. I do want to point out that I have had mine for 22-23 months now and it is still running strong. My setup includes an APC BACK-UPS RS BR1500LCD 1500VA/865W UPS System and both the LaCie and its power supply sit out in the open so get plenty of air circulation. My usage is for daily backup via the eSATA interface, so although it is powered on 24/7/365 it only gets about an hour (probably less) of active use each day.

I finally received my LaCie hard drive. This is a well made piece of equipment - it has a solid, heavy construction and an elegant appearance.

I was relieved that the light is a pleasant shade of blue and is not bright at all, unlike other hard drive lights with blindingly bright LEDs.

This drive is not silent, though it is fairly quiet. I can clearly hear the drive running from several feet away but it's not disturbing. The fellow who said that he can't hear it with his ear right next to it, well the drive must not have been running at that moment.

I'm using this as a Time Machine backup drive. With a Firewire 400 connection to my old G5 iMac, it backed up 270 GBs in under 5 hours. At first the Time Machine backup was dog slow. Then I remembered to turn off my virus software, AND most important, I changed the Spotlight preferences by selecting the Privacy tab and adding my backup drive to prevent Spotlight from indexing/searching it. After that the backup process just flew!

After writing data for 5 hours the drive was warm, but not hot. The aluminum heat-sink case seems to cool the drive very well.

Eventually I will attach it to an Apple Airport Extreme via USB to use it as a network drive for wireless use by my laptop as well. Unfortunately the Airport Extreme wireless router does not provide a Firewire 400/800 connection - just ethernet or the much slower USB 2.0. I'll provide an update on the performance at that time.

All in all, I am quite happy with this purchase.

I would love to give this a better rating. But this is the best I can do.

Bought this LaCie less than 1.5 years ago. Set it up, plugged it in, and worked just fine on my Mac. It was used as a backup drive and a place to store larger files. And everything worked well for 1.5 years.

About 5 weeks ago, my internal HD was showing an imminent failure, so I switched over to the LaCie until a replacement was obtained. In the meantime, life occurred, and it took me four weeks to get a replacement. Got the replacement on a Thursday, but when I went to replace the internal drive on Friday, the LaCie decided it no longer wanted to cooperate. The blue light came on, some disk sounds for a few seconds, but nothing else happens.

Both the local LaCie dealer and LaCie HQ agree it's the power supply (Warning: Power supply problems are not an isolated occurrance with these LaCies). So hopefully I haven't lost anything except some time and patience. And they have agreed to send me a new power supply, under warranty. However, neither the local dealer or LaCie HQ have the power supply in stock. There's a minimum of 2-4 weeks wait. And since I'm currently out of country, shipping is at my expense.

If you currently have this drive or similar, buy yourself a backup power supply. Do it now. The sanity you save might be your own.

~~~~~ Updated review, October 9, 2009 ~~~~~

Obtained a new power supply from LaCie, plugged it in and hoped for the best. And it worked. For about 6 weeks. A different problem, and LaCie again sent me another power supply. AND, I bought another power supply as a backup. (Numbers 3 and 4) But alas, it was not meant to be this time. Power supplies #3 and #4 gave me the same results as the ill-fated power supply #2. So that likely means that it's the internal electronics in the drive enclosure itself. It's likely not the power supplies. To further save my sanity, I'll likely pull the drive from this enclosure and install it in another.

If I could, I'd change the review to a one. But it seems I'm stuck with two stars too.

I've used Lacies for years as a video editor. They used to be rock solid and dependable. Not anymore. For the last year, the Lacie d2s I've got from Amazon have loose drives. They rattle out of the box. Unacceptable. I opened one and the drive wasn't even in the slot. I sent the last d2 back to Amazon and got a new one - still rattles. It's back to G Tech drives for me.

I recieved My D2 Quadra, backed up about 500GB of data only to have the drive fail in less than two days. Being that the data was sensitive business related files and uncopyrighted images of my own creation, I was not inclined to send the drive anywhere I could not be certain my information would not be mishandled. I won't be purchasing anymore electronics from LaCie or Amazon. I am a repair tech for certain types of electronic circuitry, and I chose to open the enlosure. What I found was the interface circuit board within the drive was apparently refurbished or damaged- Sold as New! Lacie of course refused to replace only the printed circuit board. So I am potentially out 153.00

If one thinks of all the items that get returned to Amazon and places like Lacie, one realizes a lot of this stuff is merely repacked and sold as new to someone else.

Our circumstances:
-- Bought this puppy from Amazon for my wife's new (2009) Mac Mini that we recently purchased.
-- Amazon delivered it overnight for just a $3.99 premium over the free shipping and it arrived well packed and on time.
-- Though our Mini is the low end model with but 1GB RAM and a 120GB internal HD, the next model up, which features a 320GB drive and 2GB RAM, costs $200 more and was otherwise identical! I upgraded our RAM for $45 then bought this LaCie d2 drive for $153 and now have a 1.12TB Mac Mini for less than Apple's much more space limited 'upgrade' model--an especially good deal if you factor in tax savings!

Pros:
-- Quality! Feels really well made with high quality 3-way on/off/auto switch, well anchored ports and--and this was key for me--*all 4* cables that you might need--USB 2.0, eSATA, and both Firewire 400 & 800--a rarity! And... all are of reasonable length (ie., none of those 7-inchers some cheapo manufactures include). Quite heavy and definitely not what you'd consider casually portable, esp. with its required power brick (though it's rather svelte for a brick!). I consider this a positive for desktop applications.
-- Quiet! Have it sitting behind the monitor and it's barely perceptible. Much, *much* quieter, for example, than the Fantom 250GB external drive I have on my Windows machine.
-- Cool! Thick, heavy aluminum case is fanless and ribbed... pretty much a hollowed n' hefty heat sink that was just barely warm after transferring our 90GB of data... seems equally fast or faster than the internal drive... and way faster than the USB bus-powered Western Digital 250GB drive I'd had hooked up earlier; we're now attached via the included high quality FW 800 cable. BTW: Set up with the Mac was a complete no brainer... plugged it in and it asked if we wanted to optimize it for Mac or Windows/Linux... one click and about a minute later... Voila! Ready to rock! Furthermore--and this may be very important to some of the greener Mac owners--this drive reliably auto-powers down and then rapidly spins back up when you wake your Mac; apparently some of the currently available so-called "Mac friendly" Western Digital drives fail to power down & back up automatically, particularly when connected via Firewire (check the reviews!).
-- Capacious! Comes in around 936GB, the usual... not sure what to do with all this space, so tried turning on the Time Machine feature of Leopard and no troubles there.
-- Comely! The brushed aluminum exterior is refined with no sharp edges/burrs and a fairly close match to the Mini's, though admittedly, the ribs do lend it a different, slightly more 'aggressive' vibe.

Cons:
-- Cost... and this just a minor gripe... On Newegg and Amazon these days you can easily find 1TB drives for under a hundred bucks, though admittedly, these are not quad interface models with all cables and back up software--and perhaps more importantly, did not enjoy the positive reviews this drive's garnered.
-- Reliability? Too early to tell... will hope for best but so far no signs it's gonna 'byte' the dust! And if it does... well then C'est LaCie! (heh!)

Summary:
I highly recommend this drive... especially for those of you with eSATA or Firewire 800 ports who want to take advantage of all that extra bandwidth, and/or those of you out there with Macs who--like me--*really* appreciate a hassle-free experience.

~

UPDATE 1/1/2010: Three months in now with no problems--still runs much quieter than Tiger's rapidly reversing Escalade, faster than his fleeing sponsors and more reliably than The Enquirer's coverage of his 'front nine'... 'Cie ya'!

~

I bought one of these brand new and it stopped working about thirty days later and I hadn't even gotten around to really using it yet, as it was purchased to store some recordings I was making and those weren't done yet. So, it basically stopped working from merely being booted up each time my PC was turned on.

I called Lacie and that's when I was informed that I would have to send it back AT MY EXPENSE and all they would do is try and fix it (yea sure) or replace it with a refurb (which of course they did). So, let me get this straight, they have a defective, broken down junk product I was foolish enough to buy brand new, that they want to add insult to injury over by making me PAY to send it back to them, only to have it replaced by a refurb?! At least Western Digital just sends a replacement out. In summation LaCie's Customer Service is horrible and a real disservice. I will never buy another LaCie product and would be very pleased to see them go out of business.

After only a short time, the drive is working fine, but I suggest RCB consider
hearing aids, as sitting on my desktop the drive can be heard just quietly spinning,
and when actually handling data, it makes a slight "clatter".
Not bothersome, but you can hear the thing working its arm
which at least lets you know it's doing something.

If using a Mac Pro in a quiet room, which is really silent, all you will hear
is a slight whirrrrr from the disk while inactive.

Mac users with Leopard might consider ignoring the Intego Backup Assistant software that
comes with the disk and just assign it to Time Machine to start with. The
Intego software is sort of flaky to use and very slow compared to Time Machine.
Using both is not a good idea and Apple recommends not mixing TM with
other items stored on the same disc.

If Intego is interrupted by a power transient
or a hard "sleep" while creating the initial backup, you probably will have
to start over as I did until I gave up on Intego when it got upset at some
undefined "errors", requested that I repair permissions and then start over.

Time Machine works - skip Intego. It only took about three hours for
the initial backup of 230GB with a dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5.
Intego announced it wanted another 6+ hours to go before
I trashed it and turned on Time Machine.

I'd give it five stars but the little plastic strips LaCie provides to insert
in the slots to lay the disc on it's side are extremely difficult to insert
and pop out easily. Best forget them and use the stand provided to
set it up vertically. Better cooling that way anyhow.

I bought this drive in July 2008 and it worked flawlessly for 8 months until I confused my wife's laptop power supply with the drive's power supply, thereby showing the drive 19V instead of the correct 12V. Not good. The big blue light forever after slowly blinked on/off repeatedly and the drive wouldn't spin up. It was dead.

The bright side to this is that when I e-mailed Lacie Tech Support - being very upfront about my boneheaded mistake and just wondering if the drive might be fixable - they still covered the unit under it's 3-year warranty! WOW!

They initially sent me a new power supply free of charge, thinking it might possibly be that (I was sure it wasn't), then after that didn't do it, they gave me authorization to return it to be repaired free of charge. I paid to ship it to them, they replaced the internal drive (a 500GB Seagate Barracuda, I might add) and shipped it back to me within a couple days. So, for only the $12 I paid for shipping, I got a virtually new drive in under a week...which they didn't have to do, since it was obviously negligence on my part that fried the drive.

So, I have to strongly recommend this Lacie drive both because it's a reliable and well-made product and it's backed up by above-and-beyond customer service!

I bought this hard drive, which was significantly more costly than most brands, for my business specifically for its compatibility with Apple's Time Machine, which is a terrific backup solution. It was indeed easy to set up and use, but within less than a year, it started making odd noises when backing up, and within less than two, would not write to the disk and could not be recognized by the computer. Since I knew the drive came with a 3-year warranty, I looked up my receipt and went to the LaCie website to review the warranty conditions, which I have copied and included below.

I have three issues with their warranty:

1) PLEASE NOTE THAT YOUR RECEIPT MUST HAVE THE SERIAL NUMBER OF THE HARD DRIVE ON IT FOR THE WARRANTY TO BE VALID AND SINCE THAT CAN ONLY BE FOUND ONCE YOU OPEN THE BOX, RECEIPTS DON'T INCLUDE IT. This would be a valid requirement if this was a major purchase where serial numbers are typically included, but it is not a valid requirement for a small electronics item.

2) PLEASE FURTHER NOTE THAT THEY CAN REPLACE IT AT THEIR OPTION WITH A REMANUFACTURED UNIT RATHER THAN A NEW ONE, which also seems unfair since it's unlikely that one would get the full three years of use to which the buyer should be entitled.

3) THE CUSTOMER MUST PAY ALL TRANSPORTATION COSTS FOR A DEFECTIVE PRODUCT - need I say more?

Warranty language included here:

"LaCie ("LaCie") warrants, to the original purchaser, that this equipment shall be free of defects in materials and workmanship for a period of three (3) years from LaCie's date of original shipment when the equipment is used normally and is properly serviced when needed. If you discover a defect covered by the warranty set forth above, your sole and exclusive remedy will be for LaCie, in its sole discretion to (i) repair or replace the product at no charge to you; or, if a repaired unit or replacement product is not available, (ii) to refund the current market value of your product. You acknowledge and agree that replacement product, at the sole option of LaCie, may be a new product or a remanufactured product. In order to receive the remedy set forth above, you must return the product during the warranty period and include with each returned product (i) a copy of your original purchase invoice to verify your warranty; (ii) a Return Material Authorization number; (iii) your name, address and telephone number; (iv) a copy of the bill of sale bearing the appropriate LaCie serial numbers as proof of date of original retail purchase; and (v) a description of the problem. The customer must pay all transportation costs for a returned product.