POLL : Do Lacies Actually Suck Or Not?

"Once you've been burned, it doesn't matter how great the company or product usually is...it's tough to trust again!"

Amen, deb...especially with Technology. There's a phrase I like to use a kinda Mantra:

"Fool me once - shame on you. Fool me twice - shame on me."

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

> 1. We should be knowledgeable and credible here about actual facts and
> numbers rather than rely solely on individual experiences.

I can't disagree more. Our own experience is the only thing we can trust. We know our own work habits, we know which stores we go to, we know our own workloads.

Individual experiences *are* facts and numbers. I get mucked with by Lacie drives every single time I'm handed one, so what good would it do for me to know that the company's won some award somewhere? At the same time, Clay and David didn't have problems with the ones they own, so they don't have a reason to mistrust the brand.

Not trusting one's own experience is a major reason people buy the wrong equipment and keep getting burnt time after time. The proviso, of course, is that one must be knowledgeable and operate the equipment well. And I seriously doubt that Joe, Wayne or I don't have good operator knowledge.

> 4. The question here is, are LaCie drives more failure-prone than other
> brands? I vote no, based in part upon my own experience but mainly
> because there is no factual evidence out there (and there numerous articles
> on the subject) to indicate otherwise.

All the reports of Lacie failure on this forum aren't enough "factual evidence"? Two 500GB Lacie drives beginning to fail within one week of being out of the box, both properly formatted (Mac OS Extended, non-journalled) before a scrap of data had been written on -- that isn't factual evidence? 22 drives of four brands on one show and the only two to fail are Lacies -- not factual evidence? 210 film students using various brands and the Lacies have the highest fail rate -- not factual evidence?

I don't doubt that you don't have problems with your Lacies, Clay, and it's certainly reasonable for you to defend the brand if you had a good experience with it. That's why it was useful for Jude to call the poll -- differing opinions and experiences from multiple informed sources will form factual information. But I think you're assuming we (the Lacie detractors) operate at a lower logical level just because we disagree with you, and you're dismissing our experience as subjective while awards and company stats are objective. I find that insulting.

two of my former employers each had one lacie drive fail.

i own two lacies myself (used only as temporary or transfer storage) and the only problem ive had is that sometimes they dont like to re mount once they have been "ejected". when they work they seem to work fine.

Hi.

No problems with mine now but i had a few with it.
A big computer fan next to the Lacie 320 GB Extreme Disk and a power supply were enough to cool it down. Before i could use the disk to grill burgers and onions.



Rui Barros
Editor Colorist Trainer
Lisbon, Portugal
RTP Post-Production
Apple Certified Trainer FCP 7
Apple Certified Pro FCP 7

My reading of posts over the years, and this thread in particular, is that that bigger LaCies have a lot of problems reported. The smaller ones (<300 GB) seem to have more happy owners. I am one. I have 3, a 120 GB and 2 160s, I daisy chain them to my PB, along with my camera, and I rarely have capture or playback issues. One of them did suddenly forget it had data one day, but Disk Warrior straightened it right out. I'll admit it made me a little nervous, but it's been fine since.

I remember a year or two ago on Ken Stone's site the question would keep coming up "which FW drive should I buy?" and the most prevalent answer was "LaCie", from those who owned them. That was then and there, this is here and now, but I doubt that the drives themselves changed that much in the meantime.

My conclusion about this poll is a hearty "shrug". Good to hear the experiences and opinions, but not sure anyone's mind is changed.

Scott

I've been working with computers and hard drives for a long time now. My first hard drive had 30 MB (that's Meg not Gig) and I remember wondering how I would ever fill that thing up.

I've been around people who were having problems with their drives since the mid- 80's. It seems that everyone has a particular drive brand that they have problems with. The brand that I pesonally have had the most trouble with over the years is Western Digital. However, I have one customer who will only use Western Digital, because he claims he has never lost one of their drives, and has had dozens of failures of all the other brands -- Go figure!

I currently have Samsung, WD, Segate, Hitachi, whatever's-in-the-Mac-Mini, Maxtor, whatever's in the old Dell laptop, and whatever's in the HP laptop. I haven't had a drive failure in a couple of years, so I've gotten pretty lax about backing things up. That will change when my next drive dies!

-Travis



Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Uh, kind of hard to call it for sure, but I think the current score is :

Do they Suck?

Yes : 7
No : 11
Maybe : 8

Another quick aside - does anyone have the links to the battle about chipsets?

I was always under the impression that the Oxford Chipset was good (the one used in Lacie/Icecube), and the ProLogic ones were terrible.

I am right in middle of a problem with a ProLogic kinda no name case that is giving us headaches - has anyone else experienced issues with this enclosure?

Cheers...Justin.

I've never actually had a LaCie. But at the school I go to, in one of my classes, 2 out of 30 or so people had Lacie drives. Both of them quit working, one person had his replaced, and that one quit working, too. Those are also the only hard drive failures I've seen, and most of the individuals at my school are rather computer illiterate (doesn't seem to fit with the Video and Motion Graphics course, does it? Thats WI for you...) , and they seem to think that I know a lot about them ( I try to learn, but I don't know as much as I'd like to yet). So anyone else would have come to me, too, if their drives quit, meaning no one else's has. I definitely wouldn't recommend LaCie to anyone, if only for the fact that of the 2 that I've seen in use, both have quit working properly.

I own 2 seagate externals and an internal, and I've never had a problem with them.

Jude

Is there Aussie slang for "suck?"

I'll throw my stats into the hat...three LC's D2X250G, plenty of use on a PC card on a G4 PB, oldest from 2003. Several documentaries, many commercials, one two hour instructional with many, many layers. No problems...ever.
Should I buy a Powerball ticket?



FE Meek

I was about to say that Suck has two meanings outside of America 1. Really good - from "suck it and see" - tastes really good and 2. Awful, taken from american slang.

>Is there Aussie slang for "suck?"
That would be "Blow".

Frank Nolan wrote:

> >Is there Aussie slang for "suck?"
> That would be "Blow".

Of course!! Must of had a senior moment.

>>you're dismissing our experience as subjective while awards and company stats are objective. I find that insulting.<<

Whoa Derek, I didn't say that. In a nutshell, I said that personal experience is part of the story and that to be fair to this or any other supplier, we should take both sides of the story into account. I presented the other side of the debate as factually as I could, and finished by saying that at the end of the day, to each his own based upon whatever reasons/opinions/recommendations you want to take into account.

Fair enough, I think.

No insult implied or intended.

Clay

this may be the longest thread in the history of lafcp...

at the end of the day, IMO, if 3 different people can document a similar issue, then i wont get in line to duplicate it...

Aussie slang tends to be a bit more poetic, and usually include more words beginning with F, but here's a couple to toss about...

"As useless as tits on a bull."

"About as useful as a chocolate teapot."

[It's so bad it] "Wouldn't work in an Iron Lung." (although this is more often referring to someone lazy)

"A stupid b*&$%# f*&#$%^@ piece of *&#%^$@! Oh, sorry, luv, din' see ya there..."

"As useful as tits on a bull" - any PC user telling me how unreliable my mac is.

"You never know your luck in the big city" - trying to convince same PC user that I do more actual work the him/her.

There are a thousand others - I'm working all night tonight and am bound to come up with several more...

i use 3, all for back up, never any problems in over 5 years.
touch wood

Well...In the good 'ol USA, "suck" can have a double meaning depending on how you use it (with all due respect to the respectable folk on the forum):

Lacie Drives SUCK = Bad
SUCK a golfball through a garden hose = Good

...my 2¢

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I've had experience with 14 different LaCies. All told, there has been more than a 50% failure rate. 5 of the drives were used for archiving. Put on a shelf in a temperature and humdity controlled environment. Each of those archive drives has had a failure. Sometimes software repair has recovered much of the data, but not all.

When my partner stopped by LaCie's booth at NAB this year and asked about out of warranty repair, the person at the booth said that they only repair drives in warranty.

Okay, I'll chime in, we have about 20 Lacie drives at work. 2-60gb, 2-120gb, 2-200gb, 12-250gb and 2- 1 terrabyte drives. The only problem we have had has been with the first terrabyte drive. It's 2 800 connectors have failed and it doesn't always mount. The second terra drive has been good and we've never had a failure with one of the smaller drives. If I had to draw a conclusion from this poll, I'd say you're safe with drives of 300gb and smaller, but your rolling the dice on the bigger ones. I know I wouldn't recommend to my company to buy another terrabyte drive from Lacie, but we just picked up a 300gb yesterday for a show I'm starting on tomorrow (it's DV, so it has more than enough space).

"...When my partner stopped by LaCie's booth at NAB this year and asked about out of warranty repair, the person at the booth said that they only repair drives in warranty."

Yeah...you want to see them have a total meltdown? Ask them what kind of drives they use in their units on any given day. They can't tell you because hey don't know. Hows that for support?

I love this...52 hits & counting Ya think this topic hits an open nerve?



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Current (final?) Poll Result :

As useless as tits on a bull?

Yes : 9
No : 13
Maybe : 9

I'm not sure if you could add yes and maybe together, because they are incidences of "I had one or know one that failed, but have another one that's alright". In which case, they are both examples of suckworthyness and non-suckworhtyness.

Let's divide the maybes into half and half - which makes

Yes : 9 + 4.5 = 13.5
No : 13 + 4.5 = 17.5

And I have to say, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, how many of the Nos are just people who haven't had a failure *yet*? But that's obviously my bias coming out..

I'm tempted to call it about even. Which means I will try to be more nuetral when people ask about them, but I'm still not gonna buy one if I can personally avoid it.

Thanks for participating in the poll, all

Jude is obviously trying to put this one to bed -which I think it a good thing, although I would love some opionions on chipsets - read my post above.

And at 1:34am in the morning, I would like to say to everyone that 'suckworthyness' is my favourite Australian word.

The end.

grafixjoe wrote:

> "...When my partner stopped by LaCie's booth at NAB this year
> and asked about out of warranty repair, the person at the booth
> said that they only repair drives in warranty."
>
> Yeah...you want to see them have a total meltdown? Ask them
> what kind of drives they use in their units on any given day.
> They can't tell you because hey don't know. Hows that for
> support?
>
> I love this...52 hits & counting Ya think this topic hits
> an open nerve?
>

I think the support question is the big one - any drive, brand, chipset, cooler or whatever might fail. They all use more or less the same parts.
I have two Lacies working fine for quite a long time. But had one which did not and waiting for a warranty replacement from LaCie for 8 weeks is bad, and I'm not the only person who had to wait that long, I know several who had to wait even longer and got into the same support trouble grafixjoe described.
I decided to buy enclosures and drives at the PC dealer next door. If the enclosure has trouble, I'll go there and will get a new one immediately, same with the drive. Data maybe lost in any case - with brand drives like LaCie or any other.
Okay, I need a screw driver and a little knowledge maybe about technics.

I had a big project last year and bought 6 400's Maxtors because of the read/write cycle speed and they all failed after three days - was not that big issue because the project was at an early state and there where nearly no data. But imagine, you have to wait eight weeks to proceed with your project - or have to buy the same amount of drives to start working.
The issue IMHO is the support or the dealer, if this can be handled fine any brand is good, LaCie as well as others - but I won't buy any LaCie again.

Andreas



Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
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CHANGE MY VOTE from "iffy" to "SCREW LACIE"!!!!!!

ive just been doing some file housekeeping and some files that have been sitting on a LaCie drive for about a year with occasional access are now showing up with various degrees of corruption.

jpegs have stripes though them, quicktimes have similar problems then shut down the player. older files, newer files but ONLY files that were on that LaCie drive. and as many of you here have read, i profess to having never had ANY significant drive issues.

dunno how the files will end up, but its about THREE YEARS of work! not all files are messed up, but enough for me to say that LaCie products will NEVER darken my door again!!!!!

from now on, if i cant get what i want from my local vendor, the project will have to wait until i can fed ex a drive from promax the next day!

Hi,

After offlining two one hour shows on internal Pata drives and using Lacie 250g D2's (about 8) for backups and tranport to post-prod facilities etc we moved to SATAII in Burly Boxes (hot swap). For what its worth we couldn't move away from the lacies fast enough. The external power adapters are a royal pain, we found them problematic to mount, and had a Terabyte Bigger Disk burn up (actual smoke) FYI it was full of 250g seagates. We have since moved to granite digital hot swap FW 400/800 enclosures and even dismantled the Lacies to recycle the drives into GD trays to use in the office for Retrospect backups and transport to other studios etc. We have a couple of Lacie 250g D2s left but never trust them and limit their use to non-critical media. Ordered the Burly Box hot swap SATAII firewire enclosure to give us full SATAII - FW compatibility.

This is my first post on LAFCPUG and I am happy to be aboard.

Greetings from the snowny Canadian mountains.

OMG...someone dredged up the "KILL LACIE" thread after almost a YEAR in hibernation :O

This thread lasted longer than most LaCie drives

- Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Well...

Most of you know my feelings on Maxtor & LaCie...

But...

For those that don't


I have had Lacie drives over the years as (at the time) they represented what seemed to be good value for money.

No

Out of nearly 30 Lacie Drives I have encountered/owned over the years I think 25 or more has had either a minor failure, corrupted data, broken connectors or total HDD/bridgeset kapputness (most of which happened on systems where the drives were NOT moved about). I have also heard or read about 100s more so this is not a case of unfortunate coincidence on my part.

To put this in perspective - out of the 100+ G-Techs - 1 bridgeset failure (replaced by dealer) and a couple of loose connectors (after a 6 month sneaker net use - hotplugging maybe 5 to 10 times per day). I have seldom read problems with G-Tech (apart from connector issues).

I currently have 4 Lacie drives here which stay turned off unless absolutely necessary as they have old data that may be needed (which I dare not check in case they mess up).

LaCie & Maxtor IMO make some of the most unreliable and stress causing hardware since using a PC (Yes PCs are worse, No you can't convince me otherwise - unless you put a Lacie/Maxtor on a PC... *shivers* the thought of working on that!).

Add 25 votes for me against the MAL (MaxtorAndLacie) contingent.

Ben



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