LaCie Disaster

[Mark]

Mat

So I am curious…. has the issue of power supply to the Big Disk drives been resolved? Is there some solution that LaCie offers that will fix the issue of intermittent spin down, disappearances, unmounting etc ? I see that the first suggestion from the LaCie support page regarding this issue is to “try another cable”. And after the back and forth on that subject here… well I don’t think I will be trying another cable.

Anyway…. it would be good to be able to use these things again .. if possible.

Thank you.

[Mike Mihalik]

The issue you refer to is one where over time, the power supply degraded, and the drives may not spin up due to it not being able to supply voltage and current within tolerance.

Replacing the power supply is the fix.

This was a unique problem experienced by a few users with drives that were a year or more old. Switching power supplies with another drive or replacing with a new power supply resolved the issue.

Replacement (or spare supplies) can be purchased from LaCie; replacements were provided at no charge to customers whose drives were still in warranty.

Mike
LaCie

[Sean Oneil]

Mat,

Thanks for looking into it. You may very well be right. I did some digging through our dozens of AC adapters and found non-LaCie ones with the same connector. They’re from some generic SATA enclosure bought from Frys or Newegg or something. The editor who fried it says he doesn’t think he tried those ones. But based on what you say, I’ll go out on a limb and assume he did.

Creative Cow should consider letting users edit and/or delete their posts. If they did, I’d happily edit my posts to reflect this new information.

All that said, I still think it’s a lousy design. Just the fact that this did happen to me proves it. Yes, the electical info is printed on the adapter, but I was talking about it being prited on the drive itself so you could easilly avoid using the wrong adapter by examining the voltage and amps. Most products do this from my experience.

And LaCie shouldn’t use generic connectors that don’t abide by a universal pinout standard. Unique connectors that lock in like a key would have prevented this. Or perhapes fuses or some sort of power regulation. Or an internal PSU. I’m not an electrical engineer, but those are three things right there that would have prevented this from happening. I know not everyone else does this, but I hold LaCie to higher standards. The reason I hold your company to higher standards is because the products are marketed to creative non-tech type Mac professionals who IMO are more likely to make this kind of mistake. I also hold LaCie to higher standards because they generally have a price premium over similar products from other brands.

So sorry about the bad info given to the user community here. I only said what I knew at the time and I’d edit it if I could. But I still think the design for these drives is flawed for what many people believe is a premium product.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[CharlieX2] “Sean, I feel your pain… Some years ago I did the EXACT same thing…. you could see the carbon scoring inside on the FW bridge, and the hard drives had gone to heaven.

Of course all the LaCie fanboys are going to call you a idiot. But personally we’ve had too many failures of LaCie drives that had nothing to do with my inattentiveness and have since migrated to other solutions.”

Thanks. I’m glad someone else understands how I’m the one who got screwed here regardless of anything else. Yes, I did anticipate that certain people would tell me I should organize my AC adapters the way Daniel Stern organized his record collection in the movie Diner.

I didn’t want this to be a LaCie bashing thread. There are plenty of those. I really just wanted to warn others and make a short gripe. All the backlash is what angered me and sent me on a tirade. Honestly, less negative things would have been said about LaCie in this thread if people were treated with more respect instead of being talked down to and patronized. Just an observation I had.

FW drives are stupid anyways. Hard drives in general should never be used as a backup device. Which is why everything I lost exists on tapes somewhere. I just have to call ceratin people and make an a-hole out of myself by asking for them.

Sean

[Mat @ lacie]

Hi Sean – Thank you for your response. We’ll continue to work hard to meet or exceed those higher standards. Customer feedback is always valuable to us. If you go to Macworld in January, come say hi!
Mat

[Mark]

Hmm over time eh? Like how much time? It seems like it didn’t take too much time for mine. Ok so I have three drives which all show these signs. How much does the fix cost per drive… since I am pretty sure they are not under warranty?

[Mike Mihalik]

Mark,

For the ones I analyzed, they were several years old.

Mike

[Mike Mihalik]

Mark,

On your other questiosn. LaCie does not repair out-of-warranty drives.

Replacement power supplies are available for purchase from our website, or from your reseller. There is a nominal charge for these supplies. There are several models available.

If you have questions, you can call our tech support using the contact info at our support website.

Mike