may i reiterate WHY i HATE laCie...

i transferred all my itunes music (and a bunch of client files) to a LaCie drive several moths ago. just as a go between from an internal drive to another machine...

about 70% of the client files open to error messages (some proceed to open, others not so successfully) and about 5% of my 20+ gigs of music (checked via a pro audio app, NOT bull S#!t soundtrack and the source files are skrewed) stop about 20 seconds in and suddenly become another song...

PHOQ EVERYTHING LACIE!!!!!!!!! - if i'm ever handed a LaCie drive ill personally crush it under my truck simply as a matter of principle!

I might send you a few of my old lacie HDDs for you to crush as therapy...

Cheaper than a shrink!





For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Wayne, Wayne, Wayne...why were you using a Lacie drive to begin with?


www.derekmok.com

So who makes good FW drives?

CHL

Chi-Ho Lee
Film & Television Editor
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro Instructor

yeah derek, i know. but i was in a pinch and had to move a bunch of files and it was all the store had. i figured "how much damage can it do? im only moving stuff once" - B.S.!!!!!

oh and it was once of their crazy f.a. porsche designed usb2.0 models... i should have expected it...

Chi-

You mean, "who makes good FireWire bridge chipsets that don't fry the disk directory in a lightning strike even when powered through an UPS?"

The drives inside are usually brand name: Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital have all shown up inside the LaCie D2's. I still use 'em. But I did lose one totally during a storm. I had media on it. But these days my policy with FW is: no more than 160 GB per drive. That really minimized the loss.

Ah, the Porsche. Never touched it. Wayne, I'd be curious to know if you *can* flatten a LaCie D2 under a truck. Took me forever to kill the drive which went south... with my foot, with a hammer, with the floor, flung from five feet. I gave up after getting plastic parts to pop out... anything that conveyed to me: "Okay, now I'm really dead."

- Loren
Today's FCP 5 keytip:
Preview effects sections with Option-P or Option-Backslash!

The FCP 5 KeyGuide?: a professional placemat.
Now available at KeyGuide Central:
www.neotrondesign.com

Nice rant LOL...when's anyone gonna learn.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

this little sucker is pretty sturdy from a physical standpoint. im actually quite curious what degree of damage a truck tire would do.

when i get to a stopping point late this week, maybe i'll set up a camera in the parking lot and document the destruction and post that to the show and tell gallery...

Quote

maybe i'll set up a camera in the parking lot and document the destruction and post that to the show and tell gallery...

...since you have a shiney new HVX, make sure you use the highest frame rate available for super-slomo. There's NOTHIN' like seeing a LaCie destroyed in super-slomo, IMHO

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I have little clips of us all over the place backing over gear that has broken in the studio (audio recording studio, back in my musician days).

If it won't flatten and you're on gravel, you can get a really good feeling by backing your rear tire on top of it (in a rear wheel drive vehicle), stopping, and then gunning it, sending the drive shooting about 40 feet through the air.

PS: I'm in Iowa where we have room to send a drive 40 feet through the air without landing in your neighbor's mashed potatoes. Please be sure you have sufficient space to try these experiments. thrillcat editorial accepts no liability for damage or injury as the result of the above mentioned experiments.

travis ballstadt
www.thrillcateditorial.com

G5DP2.5ghz, 4.5gbRAM, 2TB external SATA, Panasonic AJ-D455, G4PB1ghz, 15", 1gbRAM

Just got myself a 500gb G-Raid by G-Tech what a lovely drive found it on ebay only £156.00 hardly used.

Derek

NewerTechnology makes a good drive. Has never given me problems. Unlike those phohkin Lacie's

I have a Lacie (same Porche design and everything) at work that does the EXACT same thing. I thought maybe I formatted it wrong or something, but it's nice to hear someone else is having the same problem. I mean...not nice in a nice way...but nice in the, "Glad it's not just me" way...NOT that I'm glad it's you Wayne...I'd be just as happy if it were someone else...NOT that I'd be happy if samething happened to someone else...just saying it's good not to be alone in the world...NOT that I'm alone...


Steven Gladney

Sometimes the obvious is hidden in plain view.

I had a Lacie Bigger Disk Extreme die on me (it was only 2 months old!). Much to my horror, one day the computer was not recognizing the drive and restarting it for 1/2 an hour. Tried on 3 different computer to no avail. I had 1.2 TB of onlined footage on there that was lost. Lacie had to completely replace drive. I had the project backed up on tape, but it cost me about a grand to re-online the project. The editor said he sees problems with Lacie drives all the time.

to answer who makes good firewire drives

Get them at www.Otherworldcomputing.com or (more pricy) www.weibetech.com they both make drives that have never crashed on us.....and we buy A LOT of drives for clients to store their projects on....both company custom build their own with their own chipsets Andy

It's actually WiebeTech, Andy..."WeibeTech" means "woman tech" in German. But, www.weibetech.com *will* direct you to www.wiebetech.com. Heh heh. WiebeTech does get good reviews. I'm still a steadfast ProMax user, though they screwed up a big order for me two months ago...nearly ended up with three 400GB drives for the price of three 500GB drives...and the tech support guy initially tried to convince me that *I* was mistaken. My esteem of ProMax has taken quite a hit since Rene Kropf left.


www.derekmok.com

Thanks... getting dyslexic in my advancing years. Andy

or do you mean lysdexic?

touch wood iv'e never had a lacie drive crash..... one has been switched on for well over 2 years now......only powered off once every few months....

On for several months at a time? Methinks you're trying to get the drive to hara-kiri itself. Next time you're about to switch it off, you better do a backup, 'cause it's just a matter of time.


www.derekmok.com

If Lacie's are SO BAD, why does Apple push them in there retail outlets? Huh??? Maybe Apple could be persuaded to carry a better line of drives. Just a thought. Barry

> If Lacie's are SO BAD, why does Apple push them in there retail outlets? Huh???

Faulty argument, really...that's like saying Norton Utilities and Antivirus must be good because Apple Stores carry them, when Norton applications are universally viewed as worthless and in fact damaging in the Final Cut community.

And Apple probably *has* heard the Lacie complaints. It still won't stop scamming gullible consumers by taking those oh-so-attractive Big Disks and Porsches off its shelves, but at least Apple Stores now also carry G-Technology drives, aside from those horrible Lacies and Maxtors.


www.derekmok.com

>If Lacie's are SO BAD, why does Apple push them

because they aren't that bad . . .

Lacie D2's sell more then all other drives combined (at lease at all the stores up here I know)

there have been the odd one or two that have gone south but with 10x the sales of the closest drive maker . . . hey stuff happens

14 D2's running strong here many for over 3 years (including one run over by a bus, long story)

David at Movies Rock in Toronto
[www.tofcpug.com]

Wayne,

So pleased to hear of your agony.

I believe that's called "Shadenfreund (sp?)"

Please be true to form and post a video of the destruction process.

And ... sorry you've had this horror ... but you did know about all that laCie stuff - didn't you?

Okay, so after weeks of back and forth to Apple Store for service on my G5 Quad and recently discovering my crashes and weird tics are probably bummer third party ram, I'm now wondering if my Lacie drive is contributing to all the hell I've been through lately. Here is why I'm suspicious.

The problem with the G5 is still unresolved so in order to continue working on my project I transferred my project files to my laptop (media is on Lacie). The weird tics in Final Cut - like not being able to select a clip, and edit point, etc. were still happening on the laptop. Then I remembered the trick where you save the project as another name -- so I did that and then had no problems after that.

So what I'm really wondering now is: 1) Were the problems I was experiencing on the Laptop with Final Cut a result of a corrupted project file that transferred over from the G5, or 2) could it be that Lacie was the culprit and 3) what kind of behavior do bad Lacies display?

P.S. Believe me, I can relate to the feeling of wanting to smash up some hardware...but I still owe a lot of money on the G5. Really blows big chunks making payments on something that's makes you lose money from all the down time.

> So what I'm really wondering now is: 1) Were the problems I was experiencing on the Laptop
> with Final Cut a result of a corrupted project file that transferred over from the G5, or 2)
> could it be that Lacie was the culprit and 3) what kind of behavior do bad Lacies display?

The first two are both possible. When a drive starts to crank out, data can get miswritten and result in file corruptions. I don't think it's as bad as that in your case -- if it had been a drive failure that had caused your project file to get corrupted, it wouldn't be that likely that a simple resave would solve it.

As for your third question, common Lacie problems are overheating, noise (hardware coming loose, or the drive starting to work too hard to keep up), easy directory corruption, and high mortality rate. Most people who do have problems with Lacies would just find their drive not mounting one day. I had that happen as well -- a Lacie 1TB drive, less than a year old, that had been sent to me by a production company. On the other hand, that same company had sent me a 250GB Lacie drive which I had lying on my kitchen counter top, uncovered and unprotected, which mounted right away where the much newer, boxed 1TB would. The 1TB drive wouldn't even mount, so I couldn't run either DiskWarrior or Disk Utility on it or do a reformat. It's down to that old, tested maxim: The larger the FireWire drive, the less stable it is.


www.derekmok.com

Well...my Supervisor bought me a LaCie 250 for night project backup instead of the GRaid2 that I requested because the LaCie was conveniently sold at our local Apple store. Guess what? IT FAILED (surprise?!?!?!). I finally got my GRaid2.

I hope LaCie goes the way of Syquest...sleepin' with da fishes & buried in law suits.

- Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

<<<common Lacie problems are overheating, noise>>>

Overheating? Oh no! I never turn Lacie off because it's plugged into the Battery backup / surge protector that I never turn off. I'm getting a sick feeling that this could be contributing to my problems (besides the bad ram).

I'm going to order a Graid drive but in the meantime I have to work so here's what I'm thinking.

I know it's not ideal to work with media on your boot drive but I'm thinking maybe I should try moving my media files to the G5 and turning off Lacie and working without the external drive for a few hours and see if I experience problems. Maybe it's that damn Lacie after all!

> I never turn Lacie off because it's plugged into the Battery backup / surge protector that I
> never turn off.

Don't leave drives plugged in if you're not using them. You should disconnect the drive's FireWire cable from the computer when the drive isn't being used. ESPECIALLY Lacies.

> I know it's not ideal to work with media on your boot drive but I'm thinking maybe I should
> try moving my media files to the G5 and turning off Lacie and working without the external
> drive for a few hours

You don't have a second internal drive?
Try ordering a drive from Promax.com. You can do it either by phone or e-mail, and the drive usually only takes 24-48 hours to arrive. Promax drives get a pretty high rating in here as well -- Wayne Granzin and I are regular purveyors.


www.derekmok.com

good drives? as stated above:

g-raid. i assume that the g-regular (whatever it's called) is good too. lacie is done for me as well.
fp

G5 2.5 Dual (2004)
2gig ram 1tb sata raid array
decklink SP / Sony PVM-1954Q