LaCie 500 GB Big Disk Triple External Hard Drive (300721) FW/FW800 & USB2

by LaCie

Product Details

• Item Weight: 5.5 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0001AVSLO
• Item model number: 300721
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 11, 2004

Product Description

With 500GB -- half a terabyte -- of storage capacity, the LaCie Big Disk is one of the largest portable hard drives available. The Big Disk stores up to two days of digital video from your DV camcorder, or the equivalent of 100 personal MPEG-2 DVD-Video discs! 3-way interface - FireWire 800, FireWire 400 & Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Rotational speed - 7200 RPM Sustained transfer rate - FireWire 800 - up to 55 MB/s; FireWire 400 - up to 35 MB/s; USB 2.0 - up to 34 MB/s Average seek time - 10 ms Buffer - 2 MB Dimensions - 1.7H x 6.3W x 10.6D Weight - 5.51 pounds Requirements - FireWire 800 (9-pin) interface, Mac OS 10.2.4+ or Windows 2000 / XP; FireWire (6-pin / 4-pin) interface, Mac OS 9.x & 10.x or Windows 98SE, 2000, ME & XP; USB 2.0 interface, mac OS 10.2.x+ or Windows 2000 / XP; USB 1.1 interface, Mac OS 9.x & OS 10.x or Windows 2000 / XP Includes FireWire 800 & 400 cables, i.LINK 6-to-4 pin cable, USB 2.0 cable, drive stand, power supply

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars 400GB lost..., September 3, 2004

By 

Nick "monkeygopop! Studios" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: LaCie 500 GB Big Disk Triple External Hard Drive (300721) FW/FW800 & USB2 (Personal Computers)

I am a big fan of LaCie drives, but this drive...not so much.

In less than two weeks I had to use DiskWarrior3 at least five times to rescue the drive. The first time I lost about 4GB of data (though I later discovered that some of the other data was in fact corrupted). Obviously, there is something wrong with at least some of these drives as the problems described by others are too similar to be coincidence.

Realising the drives (this drive is actually a hardware RAID 0 consisting of two 250GB drives inside the enclosure) were about to tank, I ordered myself two 250GB LaCie drives and disconnected the 500GB less it tank again before I could do a file transfer. Well, after receiving my new drives the 500GB did tank again, but this time even DiskWarrior was useless. Drive Recover X was able to find the vast majority of the files, but I actually opted not to bother transferring them since I would then have to go through every file to check for corruptions. Since 90-95% of the data is backed-up on other drives and discs (and the other 5-10% will just require some extra work to replace) I just wiped the thing and sent it off for my refund.

I will continue to buy LaCie drives as this is the only problem I have ever had with their products, but I'm going to steer clear of these hidden RAID drives (which is a shame because I was really looking forward to getting one of the 1TB drives...). I'll stick to daisy chaining the smaller d2 drives.

35 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Chokes on Win XP SP2, customer service is lacking, September 8, 2004

By 

Long Beach Native (Long Beach, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: LaCie 500 GB Big Disk Triple External Hard Drive (300721) FW/FW800 & USB2 (Personal Computers)

Although I'm a registered user and LaCie has my e-mail address, they did NOT notify me that the drive is not compatible with Win XP SP2 -- I had to find out the hard way. I have to return the drive in order for them to upgrade the firmware (their field upgrade failed on three different machines), and they won't do a swap where they send me a replacement first -- so I have to find a way to back this whole thing up before I return it. A big pain that they could have avoided with a single, simple e-mail -- but they don't do this as a matter of policy (per their support staff). Ugh. Thanks for nothing, LaCie.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Perfect timing, May 9, 2005

By 

M. Twomey (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: LaCie 500 GB Big Disk Triple External Hard Drive (300721) FW/FW800 & USB2 (Personal Computers)

I've been using a LaCie 500 GB Big Disk for managing a large amount of media for a Final Cut Pro Project. On my Mac, it worked fine for about a year -- until a week ago. Suddenly, the files were inaccessible, and a foreboding clicking sound came from the drive. I ran disk repair utility, and I was able to again access the files -- but 3/4 of them had been wiped out! I called LaCie, and the guy wasn't particularly helpful, but he did confirm that "that clicking sound is bad news."

So I thought to myself -- at least I've backed up the data and the Big Disk is still under warranty -- I think. But when I dug out my receipt I found my purchase was exactly two weeks past one year ago. Ouch! Could they have timed it much better?

So buyer beware -- and don't fail to back up your files!