Mike Mihalik
Forum Replies Created
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An interesting response, and perhaps valid for some.
On the other hand the drives are valuable tools to those who have determined their capabilities and limitations.
Some of the same users you refer to may have the same difficulties with more expensive and less forgiving systems.
For example, price does not always determine quality or capability. Price does however provide margin for resellers who are able to provide pre-sales and after sales service and support.
There are many LaCie resellers; some sell strictly on price, while the more successful ones provide the sales and support that actually helps the customer. The resellers will provide their customers with products they are able to stand behind.
I encourage the readers here to go beyond the reports here, and to pick and choose their resellers based on their successes. Some users are better off seeking those resellers.
Mike
Mike
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Dave,
Let me comment on the primary reason LaCie does not offer repair services beyond the warranty period:
– the actual product design is periodically updated to account for new types of drives, and component changes throughout the product lifecycle
– we do not keep an inventory of older parts, preferring instead to maintain an continuous inventory of new parts. These newer parts may not be perfect replacements for older products
– when you factor in cost of inventory, replaced components or drive, packaging, handling, benchtime, shipping, and the fact that the warranty is not extended for the repaired drive, a comparison needs to be made to the cost of a newer drive. There comes a time when a new drive is a better investment, as the repaired drive could be more costly. The new drive also comes with a new warranty.To your point, if one has the skills to “build-your-own” drive, then there is little need for the support posts here, and little need to ask how to do it, or how to fix a drive when it goes bad. There are indeed many, many sites that help users with this path.
LaCie does not intentionally design products to fail. We would not be successful otherwise.
As to longer warranties, there are very few companies that offer a warranty longer than one year for external drives. For the one or two companies that do, even they experience failure, and few, if any sell replaceable parts for the reasons I outlined above. There are also few if any companies that offer warranties longer than a year for computers. Our warranty is a repair or replace warranty, and sometimes the user gets an almost new or better replacement product whenthere is a failure, as hard disks really are not repaired.
That does leave an opportunity for companies to come in and offer products that meet those needs: longer warranties; replaceable parts; build-your-own drives. If this is the route you choose, that is fine. Just do your research with the company and find out what guarantees there are 1 and 2 years down the road.
With drive manufacturers rolling their drive models every 6-9 months, it will be difficult to get a guarantee that a particular drive model will be available when you really need it. Sure, there will be a replacement drive, but perhaps not an exact replacement; more likely a better product at a better price.
Macintouch was mentioned in a previous post. I am the Mike from LaCie that is frequently quoted in these reports and follow-up. If you wish to contact me directly, send an email to “firewire at lacie dot com”
Mike
LaCie -
Kevin,
To give you an idea, LaCie shipped more than 2 million drives the year ending June 2005.
We will exceed that this year.
Mike
LaCie -
I am from LaCie.
In a normal OS X system, your drive should not spin down unless you have set the preference to spindown drives when idle for a certain period of time. I am sure this is not your intent.
We have seen a few situations in some customers systems where the drives spindown, regardless of the system preference setting in Energy Saver. This means that there may be a corrupted preference file or some other conflict within the system. Proper operation can be confirmed by booting with an OS X system CD or DVD, and then noting whther drive still spins down; this assures a clean system for testing. If the drive spins all the time as expected when booted from the clean system, it means that there is corruption within the normal installed OS X system that must be corrected; it is not a hard drive problem, as it is the system that is telling the drive to spindown (regardless of the preference setting in control panel).
What if the drive continues to spindown, even with a clean system? Then it may be a defective cable, connector, FireWire interface, drive power supply, or the drive itself.
I am sorry to hear that you consider the drive rubbish. We have many more customers who would disagree.
Mike
LaCie -
This is not a drive restriction, but rather an OS and application restriction.
It is the applications and OS that do not properly handle nearly full drive conditions.
Same thing will happen to internal boot drives and media drives that get nearly full. This is not something unique to FireWire or USB drives. Same thing will happen to SCSI, IDE, and SATA drives.
As someone earlier in the thread sated, it is best to be conservative with all aspects of the system. Proper precautions, and conservative use will lead to more successful efforts.
Mike
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Yes, OS X does all sorts of magic, and leaves very few clues regarding it’s operation.
Mike
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The icon on the left in a Finder Widnow is simply an alias.
It may have been deleted.
Simply drag the volume icon back to the left pane of the Finder Window and drop it between the icons of the other drive icons. Don’t drop on another drive icon, as this will simply place an alias on the drive.
Mike
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The LaCie Lightscribe drive supports +R, -R, and +DL media for DVD.
For Lightscribe, only +R media is available at this time.
You of course can use any + or – media with the drive to forgo the Lightscribe labeling capability.
Mike
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Godfrey,
With the additional info provided that other FireWire peripherals are OK, then you are likely right that the drive is D E A D.
Quite strange that the failure coincides with Tiger upgrade, as there is nothing in the Tiger update that should do this.
Does Apple System profiler report anything regarding the drive?
You may want to continue this dialog by sending me an email to:
“firewire at lacie dot com” – just make it look like a real email address before sending the message on to me.Mike
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Godfrey,
I suggest that you first try to reset your FireWire ports.Follow these instructions to reset the FireWire ports in your computer from this Apple Technote:
https://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=88338
The LaCie Update Tool v1.3.2 is still on the wbsite at https://www.lacie.com/support/drivers; simply make sure you have the Hard Drive product family, and scroll down the list.
Direct link is:
https://www.lacie.com/download/drivers/LaCieUpdateTool.dmgApple advises that FireWire peripherals be disconnected before performing system updates to prevent this type of proble.
Finally, after performing these steps, make sure that drive is visible within Apple System Profiler in the FireWire section, and that it is also visible within Disk Utility.
Mike