Lacie Big Disk question

I now feel almost embarrassed when I have to ask about these Lacie hard drives on this Phorum but until I get a kick ass G RAID I'm just gonna keep askin' so here goes. A tech friend of mine (in London is where we are) said that Lacies are ok depending on how much you put on and delete - delete being the operative word. He said if you just keep your stuff on there and don't delete all the time you stand less risk of disk failure. I asked "what about defragging?" and he said "don't even go there" so...I don't know, do I risk a defrag? I have to delete stuff as we use uncompressed 8 bit. He also said "Your drive will fail, it's just a matter of when." Who needs this?

"Your drive will fail, it's just a matter of when."

According to history - he is absolutely correct. Don't know when LaCie will get their act together but it is probably due to the Maxtor drive inside. However, since Seagate just bought Maxtor out, it will get real interesting.

Usually, these Firewire enclosures are very sturdy, but power supply and cooling issues are also very important. For some reason, Maxtor drives don't seem to work with Macintosh computers very well.

""Lacies are ok depending on how much you put on and delete""
Never heard that and it doesn't make a bit of sense. Defragging is not a BIG issue unless you fill up a drive regularly and then delete files. Since data is written sequentially from the outside track of the disk drive, fragmented files only occur when you run out of room to copy files sequentially or delete files in the middle. You have no control over this, however.

> A tech friend of mine (in London is where we are) said that Lacies are ok
> depending on how much you put on and delete - delete being the operative
> word. He said if you just keep your stuff on there and don't delete all the
> time you stand less risk of disk failure.

If somebody tells you, "The PowerMac G5 fails more often if you run Final Cut Pro, so don't ever save your Final Cut project file", would you then start doing 16-hour sessions without saving?

Not being able to delete things from an active in-service hard drive is like amputating the baby's arms and legs just to make the crib last longer.

John is right -- every drive fails at one point or another. (Though my six-year-old Promax 48GB drive is still defying this wisdom, at least for now) All you can do is be prepared for it -- undue paranoia can be a liability. Do intelligent backups, have good file management, have extra drives so you don't get stopped in your tracks if one does die in the middle of a project. Your friend's solution is not a solution at all, in my opinion. Hell, even a SATA RAID died while I was working on a commercial. Good batch lists and diligent backups of non-retrievable files; that's the way to go. I've never had a Lacie die on my watch, either, though I'm always prepared for the worst when one gets delivered to me.

I've been running LaCie drives for several years now and have never had a problem. Plus, a lot of the posts one reads claiming "LaCie Hard Drive Failure" etc. very often have nothing to do with the drives themselves but rather with some form of pilot error.

That's not to say that drives never crash, they do, but, someone correct me, I've yet to see hard proof that a LaCie is more prone to fail than any other brand of external drive.

Just follow the protocolls as described in the operaton instructions in the manual, back up important stuff regularly (as with ANY type of drive or machine be it Mac of PC), and everything should run aok.

Tell me if i'm wrong but i've heard (in here?) that Lacies are really good drives but more people have and use lacies so it seems like they have more problems, but the percentrage of issues compared to the number of users is low?



Sean

I've seen LaCies go down in flames.

These were not my LaCies. My LaCies have never given me an ounce of trouble. Not one scrambled directory, not one crash, not one failure to mount. (knock on wood)

I think what it really boils down to is how well you take care of them. A LaCie perhaps doesn't stand up to abuse quite as well as some other brands. If it's taken care of, and is given the tiniest bit of maintenance and TLC on occasion, my experience has shown that mine are reliable.

The ones I've seen die excruciating deaths were ones that clients used to ship media across the country. Or drives that were stored in damp, musty old storage areas in old buildings in banker's boxes with the field footage (seriously, who does that?). Or drives that had been knocked around, dropped, and treated like they were supposed to be indestructible. Or drives that were never maintained or wiped occasionally between projects. Or drives that were allowed to collect dust in, on and around themselves..or...or...

That being said, the only reason I own these LaCie drives is due to last minute needs and I had no choice but an off-the-shelf solution. I wouldn't have chosen them given a full range of options. When I had no choice, I purchased them, and am truly pleased that at least the ones I have are not living up to the reputation!

> Tell me if i'm wrong but i've heard (in here?) that Lacies are really good
> drives but more people have and use lacies so it seems like they have more
> problems, but the percentrage of issues compared to the number of users is
> low?

Statistics can certainly be misleading, but two of my personal experiences counter this idea:

1. Reality-TV show with four brands of drives: Around 12 Red Orb 120GBs, four Lacie 200GBs, three Maxtor 200GBs, one EZQuest (size unknown). The EZQuest and all the Red Orbs and Maxtors lasted through the three months of editing, being passed back and forth among editors. One out of the four Lacies died before the online, and another one was holding on for dear life (the classic noisy, moribund state). And one year later, that same company delivered me an 18-month old Lacie 1TB drive which was fried; it may have died well before it ever got to me. So its trouble-free working lifespan was around a year, while my three-year-old Promaxes are still as active as Energizer bunnies.

2. Back in film school where I worked as an editing instructor and tech support, we had around 60 students per year, so anywhere between 60 and 120 students were working in the editing rooms at any given time. About 2/3 of them used Lacie drives. Nearing the middle of the school year, we had maybe two or three cases of non-Lacie drives dying, while Lacie deaths were about two...per week.

We have to LaCie T-Byte stacks. Within three months or so, one of the stack motherboards failed. Drives are in perfect condition, we just couldn't get to them.

That gives us a 50% failure rate. I'm not impressed.

Koz

Oh ok well i stand corrected thanks Derek and Greg.



Sean

Hi all.


My dual 1.42 GHz G4 tower uses nothing but Maxtor drives. I have four of them inside, and they are all ATA 133 7200 RPM 16 MB cache 200 GB drives.

I have had them for going on three years, and I have never had a failure of any kind. The boot drive is journaled, and the other three drives are unjournaled. I even use a Maxtor in my home-built external USB2.0/FireWire 400 drive enclosure. Still, no failures were experienced ever.

Perhaps I am lucky in that I have not had the problems that others may have had with the Maxtor brand of drive. If it means anything, my G4 tower is always on, and it will automatically sleep after 30 minutes.

However, as mentioned above, I have a decent backup strategy, as my project files are saved in duplicate, if not triplicate. Above all, a good backup strategy is a must.


Take care.

-DH

A Lacie is about as relieable as a crack junkie in a jewelry store.

They should only be used in emergency or as a second backup.
I have had 5 drives over the past 3 years and they have all failed with loss of all media as a result.
I have found though, that if you do not move them or keep on reconnecting them they may last longer than a few months but I would,nt count on it.

We have lost media on a LaCie too. It was properly maintained, the drivers updated, not knocked around or subjected to heat/moisture/cold.

It would periodically fall asleep during editing, and sometimes it would go offline when someone's mobile phone rang. Then it failed completely, taking a stack of media with it.

I also have an old icecube case with a 40 gig seagate drive in it that's been flawless since 2001.

My answer to lacie: we had FOUR lacie disks die on us within the last two months. No abuse - all still under warranty.

Fortunately we've been able to save all the data - because in all the cases the bridgeboards failed, the harddiscs worked fine.

I quite had it with lacie - but not sure what to do in lack of other inexpensive alternatives...

Hi all.


Quick question. I have heard some of the horror stories concerning the use of the LaCie Big Disk external FireWire drive. I have never owned one, and do not necessarily plan on getting one.

My question is this. How is it constructed? Is it enclosed within an aluminum case? Does it contain a fan, and if so, how many?

For those who have had bad experiences with LaCie, out of curiosity, would you consider building your own external FireWire hard disk using a high quality enclosure?


Thanks.

-DH

LaCie = death.

Nuff said.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I'm obviously late to this party but I might as well post. My first Lacie D2 Triple Extreme 250GB starting dying a slow death after about a year. It still works, just not all the time. That renders it completely useless to me.

My second Lacie D2 is just over a year old. Recently I've begun to hear the telltale 'knock' inside. If there's one thing I know for sure it's that one knock leads to another and I've already begun to transfer important files from this drive. I'm sure it's days are numbered as well.

So I've blown $500.00 on Lacie's that are dying after only a year each and I read horror stories all over the net. I take care of my stuff, it's my business after all. I can't imagine why these things suck so hard but they do. You'd think Lacie would get it together wouldn't you?

Derek talked me into Promax and I've got one. Hope it hangs in there. It certainly seems like a better-built drive enclosure.