Re: Another Lacie bites the dust

[Hmurchison]

I’m not sure but the problem is likely the supporting bridge chipset. Lacie needs to rapidly move toward incorporating SATA connections on most of their high performance lineup. FW has been nice but it makes more sense to connect directly to the controller.

[Mark Raudonis]

We’ve purchased probably 10 lacie drives over the last year. Four of the Terrabyte biggies and the rest in the 250 range. We’ve had at least a 40% failure rate. We will not be buying any more Lacie drives.

Mark

[Zman]

lacie drive are not built for video, and they said that. if you need to do video you need a G tech drive. they are built to do video and they back that up.

[R. James]

Why not consult LaCie about these problems? Aren’t these drives under warranty?

[Geof Gilland]

We have multiple LaCie drives…at last count around 12… that are in some sort of use almost daily.
We have only had 2 or 3 failures and LaCie has always quickly repaired/replaced them. Lucky we have multiple backups of our projects. I also have a GTech drive that I am very happy with. But with our DVCAM work flow, these LaCies work fine.

[R. James]

Same here, which is why I’m always skeptical when I read these kinds postings. You’d think with such a consistently spectacular failure rate, one would make mention of LaCie customer service. I mean, do people simply throw them in the trash, buy some more, then complain on message boards about it?

I’m not saying these postings in particular are suspect (and I’m certainly curious about what LaCie service has done in this case) but I have yet to see one of my own or a client’s LaCie bite the dust. And that includes my CD-R & DVD/CD combo burners from LaCie which keep on ticking.

[Walter Biscardi]

[ange] “lacie drive are not built for video, and they said that. if you need to do video you need a G tech drive. they are built to do video and they back that up.”

Excuse me? Lacie says their drives are not build for video? Quite a false statment. I mean not all their drives are meant for video use, but certainly all the FW 800 units are. I run the Big Disk Extremes here and they’re fantastic running 8bit and 10bit uncompressed.

To say they aren’t built for video is flat out wrong.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Mat @ lacie]

Hello Ange,
I am sorry to hear that you received the wrong information about LaCie drives. LaCie has always been involved in the Digital Content Creation industry. We were exhibiting at NAB and some of our products are qualified by AJA, BlackMagic, Pinnacle and Media100.

The Big Disk Extreme was the first single FW800 device to handle multiple streams of uncompressed video (January 04), a few months before other manufacturers came up with similar solutions. Our new SATA drives are also well suited for video applications.

Hope this helps.
Mat

[Otis F]

Be as skeptical as you wanna be digital8boy, I thought my tone was quite restrained, but anyway I’ll outline my personal experiences and those of colleagues/friends a little more clearly.

When I lost my personal drive it was less than a year old, it was sent back to the dealer who sent it to Lacie for repair, it came back and was seemingly ok, with all the data intact. When I asked my dealer what Lacie had done they told me they had no idea. A few weeks later it went again. I still have that drive, and mount it now and again, it generally works for a while but then a clunking sound starts and it dismounts.

A colleague who works mainly with After Effects lost his, but being more technically tuned in than myself ripped the drive out and successfully mounted it in his G4. His problem was obviously the firewire bridge, whereas mine must have been a drive failure.

A mate of mine had a Lacie drive which he used to store his MP3 music collecton, I can’t remember the exact details but I know he lost it all, and the drive was just out of warranty.

This latest failure will be returned to the place of purchase as soon as I’ve managed to back it up-hopefully. You and Walter Biscardi amongst others have nothing but good things to say about their drives, which is great and I respect your opinion. I wish my experiences had been similar, their drives are nice on the eye and very competitively priced, however I haven’t been as fortunate.

I was also told by my new dealer that he refuses to sell Lacie drives anymore due to such a high failure rate, and Mark Raudonis has stated in this thread that he has had a 40% failure rate.

This evidence may be anecdotal but I don’t think it can be ignored, and I don’t see what it has to do with Lacie customer service. Especially when the drive hasn’t been bought directly from them, here in the UK you return it to the place of purchase if it is wiithin it’s warranty. Lacie may well have the best customer service in the world, but if their products don’t stand up to the task in hand then what good is that? If one of their drives falls over I don’t care if a Lacie rep helicopters in and hand delivers me a drive personally, it will still mean I’ve probably lost some work and certainly time. I notice that Mat@LaCie was quick to respond to any suggestion that their drives were not suitable for video, but wasn’t quick to respond to my message, in fact he didn’t. So what does that say about their CS?

My original message wasn’t meant as a rant, I was hoping for some enlightenment.

Anyway enuff said, I’ve gotta go as my dealer is installing my new FCPHD Kona 2 system with the G-Raid, I’ll post here if that goes down-in which case I think it will definitely be something to do with the metal plate in my head!

All the best

Otis F

[Mat @ lacie]

Hello Otis,
I hope that you are doing well. I am sorry that you had bad experiences with our products.
I did not mean to ignore your post. I did not respond for a couple reasons:
– You are in UK and I am in the US. I cannot easily look into your situation from here. Contacting directly LaCie UK is still your best bet. If you would like me to get involved, please email me at mgasquy@lacie.com.
– This is the FCP forum, not a LaCie forum so I usually let other users respond to each other, no matter if it’s good or bad for LaCie. I try to post only if 1- I can help with the situation quickly 2- I need to correct an inaccurate information about a product/the company.

Feel free to email me.
Thank you.
Mat