Don't Buy LaCie

[drlunanerd]

and also to keep all of the drives the same make/model... you don't want to create a RAID with different types of drives.

Apparently this isn't necessary anymore. I configured a HP server with a couple of RAID arrays. HP sent two different makes of drives, and initially I was going to send them back. Until I read a great big warning notice that said not to send differing makes of drives back, as HP warranted them for use in RAID arrays and there would be no problem as they'd tested them to work together.

Fast forward about a year and those arrays are singing along with no problems.

 

[Digital Skunk]

Thanks for keeping the post alive, but it is time for this thread to die. I still hate LaCie and will never buy from them or recommend them under any circumstances. Had I known that I couldn't buy trays but had to buy their overpriced drives to get them I would have never bought them. I have learned my lesson. I now use a FirmTek enclosure http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/ and they sell drive trays. FirmTek has received high marks from the Arizona Mac Users Group and my enclosure has been running nearly non stop since I got it. There is very little fan noise and it seems to run very cool.

But since we all now know that we should avoid LaCie and other brands that force you to buy overpriced drives we should stop posting to this thread.

Eww! The Arizona Mac Users Group recommended the FirmTek drives! I will never buy FirmTek since one of the drives the AMUG recommended crashed on me therefore the AMUG recommends bad drives and since they recommend FirmTek they also must have bad drives.

 

[Foxglove9]

I had a Lacie CD Burner many years ago. It was pretty junky for the money I paid for it. I wouldn't trust them again after that.

 

[smiles78]

In thinking about purchasing a 2big Triple Drive, is it possible to buy your own internal drives say a Seagate, and unscrew/take-off the metal tray that Lacie has installed on the 2 big Triple Drives, move it to the new drive, and use them inside the 2 Big Triple?

I don't care about voiding the warranty, just want to make sure I can upgrade the size of the RAID without having to get the overpriced drives from Lacie.

I too own a 2BIG triple and wanna upgrade the drive from 1.5TB(2x750GB) to a 3TB(2x1.5TB).
Does anybody know if I can just replace the drives with bigger ones?
I already replaced one of the 750Gig drives once that died on me (it was a cheap Samsung btw) with the same drive.
Now I want to upgrade to 2x 1.5TB (i.e. Seagates- would never pay the outrageous prices at LaCie either). Does anybody know if that's possible?

thanks,

alex

 

[Sesshi]

Apparently this isn't necessary anymore. I configured a HP server with a couple of RAID arrays. HP sent two different makes of drives, and initially I was going to send them back. Until I read a great big warning notice that said not to send differing makes of drives back, as HP warranted them for use in RAID arrays and there would be no problem as they'd tested them to work together.

Fast forward about a year and those arrays are singing along with no problems.

It's not a case of 'not necessary anymore' as modern drives getting far quieter so most of them are far less affected by issues of phasing, etc when dissimilar drives are mixed. It's partially why devices like Drobo can now exist without caveats plastered all over the place.

It is still a possibility though, especially with high-rotational-speed drives (10K+) and it does make sense not to mix drives for the most part - unless, as you say, it has been tested.

 

[dave12345]

my lacie little disk lasted 3 months - the flimsy built in USB cable broke - I ended up pulling the samsung disk out of it and putting it in a more reliable sata to usb case... I will never buy lacie again.

 

[Digital Skunk]

I too own a 2BIG triple and wanna upgrade the drive from 1.5TB(2x750GB) to a 3TB(2x1.5TB).
Does anybody know if I can just replace the drives with bigger ones?
I already replaced one of the 750Gig drives once that died on me (it was a cheap Samsung btw) with the same drive.
Now I want to upgrade to 2x 1.5TB (i.e. Seagates- would never pay the outrageous prices at LaCie either). Does anybody know if that's possible?

thanks,

alex

I personally don't see why not. I don't know if Lacie put any hardware restrictions on the chipset, but if you replaced your 750 already then I would assume that you can just unscrew the drive from the tray and put a new one in.

I will also be upgrading my 2big triple to 4TB when the 2TB drives become available. My current 2big is getting filled with GBs upon GBs of HD footage backup. Soon after I got the 2big though, I started eyeing the 4big.

 

[djkirsten]

We just ordered 10 of these in the 1TB variation....

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11026

....for FCP media managed files. The show is always 50-55 minutes per episode in the DVCPro HD 1080i 29.97 codec so the media managed files usually total around 180 gigs per episode.

So to back up two seasons worth of episodes (70+ episodes) they ordered 10 of these because they are so cheap right now.

So my question is this....how screwed are we?

 

[smiles78]

I personally don't see why not. I don't know if Lacie put any hardware restrictions on the chipset, but if you replaced your 750 already then I would assume that you can just unscrew the drive from the tray and put a new one in.

I will also be upgrading my 2big triple to 4TB when the 2TB drives become available. My current 2big is getting filled with GBs upon GBs of HD footage backup. Soon after I got the 2big though, I started eyeing the 4big.

thanks!
I'll pick up two tomorrow then and let you know how it went.
Any idea which ones work best for external drives?
I've been looking at the WD greenpoint with variable speed that save some Watts..

 

[Digital Skunk]

We just ordered 10 of these in the 1TB variation....

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11026

....for FCP media managed files. The show is always 50-55 minutes per episode in the DVCPro HD 1080i 29.97 codec so the media managed files usually total around 180 gigs per episode.

So to back up two seasons worth of episodes (70+ episodes) they ordered 10 of these because they are so cheap right now.

So my question is this....how screwed are we?

Very screwed.

That is the poorest backup solution I have ever seen in MY LIFE. Worse even then the IT department at my newspaper. Nothing against you personally, just that particular method of backing up GBs of valuable data.

You are better off returning them and getting an 8 bay enclosure. If money is an issue then I am sorry to say that the show spent the money in the wrong places.

Promise us you won't come back screaming about how crappy LaCie is if you don't return them and look for a more stable solution for backup.

thanks!
I'll pick up two tomorrow then and let you know how it went.
Any idea which ones work best for external drives?
I've been looking at the WD greenpoint with variable speed that save some Watts..

Let us know for sure. I think any server class drive would work beautifully in an external enclosure. Depending on your application, any drive would do fine.

 

[smiles78]

We just ordered 10 of these in the 1TB variation....

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11026

....for FCP media managed files. The show is always 50-55 minutes per episode in the DVCPro HD 1080i 29.97 codec so the media managed files usually total around 180 gigs per episode.

So to back up two seasons worth of episodes (70+ episodes) they ordered 10 of these because they are so cheap right now.

So my question is this....how screwed are we?

I have two of them. One worked fine for about two years until today.
The other died after a year and a half. It got fixed with the warranty.
I also have similar ones with lower capacities that run with no problems. One for six years almost every day.
If you dont let them run 24/7 you'll be fine.
Harddrive failures happen to all kind of HDs. You always take your chances.

 

[djkirsten]

Very screwed.

That is the poorest backup solution I have ever seen in MY LIFE. Worse even then the IT department at my newspaper. Nothing against you personally, just that particular method of backing up GBs of valuable data.

You are better off returning them and getting an 8 bay enclosure. If money is an issue then I am sorry to say that the show spent the money in the wrong places.

Promise us you won't come back screaming about how crappy LaCie is if you don't return them and look for a more stable solution for backup.

You know how it goes...it's not my choice. The executive producer (the guy who looks at money first and foremost) makes a decision to back up everything (mostly because our current LTO system eats up too much edit time) and asks an engineer what the CHEAPEST option is and the engineer says, "here, look, 1tb external drives for $115 a piece...we'll just get you 10!"...and me being just a lowly editor says "sure!"... so having no say, i just wanted to know how much of a problem this will be...

Also...

I have two of them. One worked fine for about two years until today.
The other died after a year and a half. It got fixed with the warranty.
I also have similar ones with lower capacities that run with no problems. One for six years almost every day.
If you dont let them run 24/7 you'll be fine.
Harddrive failures happen to all kind of HDs. You always take your chances.

...we wont be using them on a daily basis. We will back up all the episodes, and then they will sit on a shelf until they are needed. They'll only be plugged in when we back up to them and when we resurrect media from them.

This is really only supposed to serve as a second, more usable, backup system. Every piece of media will go to these drives as well as off to LTO's....it just always takes too long to pull around 200ish gigs off an LTO, just to find out that the executive producer doesn't want to re-air the segment we pulled.

 

[smiles78]

Very screwed.

That is the poorest backup solution I have ever seen in MY LIFE. Worse even then the IT department at my newspaper. Nothing against you personally, just that particular method of backing up GBs of valuable data.

You are better off returning them and getting an 8 bay enclosure. If money is an issue then I am sorry to say that the show spent the money in the wrong places.

Promise us you won't come back screaming about how crappy LaCie is if you don't return them and look for a more stable solution for backup.

From what I understood, you just wanna back the files up and put the drives in a shelve, right?
I personally back up my files by mirroring them from one large drive to a second every night using a backup program.
This way I dont have to rely on RAID sytems and controllers - because when THEY fail- you're really screwed.
I'd check all disks before using them with analytic software and you'll be ok in my opinion.

 

[bigbossbmb]

What format do you use to deliver the show?

If your finished sequence is DVCProHD, then rent a deck and output the show to DVCPro tape. That'll be cheaper than 10 1TB drives.

 

[Digital Skunk]

You know how it goes...it's not my choice. The executive producer (the guy who looks at money first and foremost) makes a decision to back up everything (mostly because our current LTO system eats up too much edit time) and asks an engineer what the CHEAPEST option is and the engineer says, "here, look, 1tb external drives for $115 a piece...we'll just get you 10!"...and me being just a lowly editor says "sure!"... so having no say, i just wanted to know how much of a problem this will be...

I can truly understand. Many times, the people in charge fail to get an understanding of those that are at the front (doing the work) before making decisions.

From what I understood, you just wanna back the files up and put the drives in a shelve, right?
I personally back up my files by mirroring them from one large drive to a second every night using a backup program.
This way I dont have to rely on RAID sytems and controllers - because when THEY fail- you're really screwed.
I'd check all disks before using them with analytic software and you'll be ok in my opinion.

True, but from what Bigbossbmb said, I can't truly say what his choice should be since I don't fully know what he/she needs.... until I just read it, in which case BBB would have the better solution. I offered the RAID solution since I am sold on mirroring the drives, backing up and moving one of the hotswappables offsite.

What format do you use to deliver the show?

If your finished sequence is DVCProHD, then rent a deck and output the show to DVCPro tape. That'll be cheaper than 10 1TB drives.

Very true.

 

[djkirsten]

What format do you use to deliver the show?

If your finished sequence is DVCProHD, then rent a deck and output the show to DVCPro tape. That'll be cheaper than 10 1TB drives.

Thats the best part...our post house is "tapeless" so they won't let us back up to tape....crazy huh!?! We have like 20 FCP's connected to over 200 TB's through an X-San....and the big man (the executive producer's boss) says we have to remain tapeless and back stuff up to hard drives or go with LTO's. No tape back up because if everyone did it....it would be "far too expensive".

We've had too many problems with the way the system is managed (stuff airs - stuff sits and waits for the librarian to put it onto the LTO - editsan gets full - files get corrupted - files THEN get put onto LTO months later - we go to use said stuff - it takes a long time and we learn stuff is corrupted) so the executive producer is trying to go around the problem for just our show - not everyone's. This way, as soon as a show airs I can back it up IMMEDIATELY.....if you want something done right, do it yourself...

By no means is it a problem to lay off to tape (we are a large post house with every deck format imaginable) but it's just a little too political.

We deliver finished shows in "flattened" quicktimes that are the said codec, not to tape.....so they figure we should back things up similarly.

Does that make any sense?

Probly not

 

[Digital Skunk]

Thats the best part...our post house is "tapeless" so they won't let us back up to tape....crazy huh!?! We have like 20 FCP's connected to over 200 TB's through an X-San....and the big man (the executive producer's boss) says we have to remain tapeless and back stuff up to hard drives or go with LTO's. No tape back up because if everyone did it....it would be "far too expensive".

We've had too many problems with the way the system is managed (stuff airs - stuff sits and waits for the librarian to put it onto the LTO - editsan gets full - files get corrupted - files THEN get put onto LTO months later - we go to use said stuff - it takes a long time and we learn stuff is corrupted) so the executive producer is trying to go around the problem for just our show - not everyone's. This way, as soon as a show airs I can back it up IMMEDIATELY.....if you want something done right, do it yourself...

By no means is it a problem to lay off to tape (we are a large post house with every deck format imaginable) but it's just a little too political.

We deliver finished shows in "flattened" quicktimes that are the said codec, not to tape.....so they figure we should back things up similarly.

Does that make any sense?

Probly not

It doesn't on your boss's end, but that's understandable for a person in such a position at times.

I would definitely go the RAID option in that case simply because you get a faster transfer time, and you can mirror your drives and pull one out to put off site, rotating them as needed. AND you can cut off the drives when needed.

 

[smiles78]

I too own a 2BIG triple and wanna upgrade the drive from 1.5TB(2x750GB) to a 3TB(2x1.5TB).
Does anybody know if I can just replace the drives with bigger ones?
I already replaced one of the 750Gig drives once that died on me (it was a cheap Samsung btw) with the same drive.
Now I want to upgrade to 2x 1.5TB (i.e. Seagates- would never pay the outrageous prices at LaCie either). Does anybody know if that's possible?

thanks,

alex

today I got 2x 1.5TB Seagate drives to replace the two 750Gigs in my 2BIG dual.

Until now.. NO LUCK!

Whatever mode I put it in, it just shows me a single 750GB drive (even though there're two 1.5TB in the back now..


any ideas??

alex

 

[smiles78]

today I got 2x 1.5TB Seagate drives to replace the two 750Gigs in my 2BIG dual.

Until now.. NO LUCK!

Whatever mode I put it in, it just shows me a single 750GB drive (even though there're two 1.5TB in the back now..


any ideas??

alex

UPDATE:

tried everything.. didn't work.

Obviously the chipsets aren't designed for bigger capacities than out of the the box.

 

[surfmadison]

Resetting LaCie

When I switch out drives I have to push the reset button on the back of my POS LaCie. This works with my MBP. First, switch the hard drives out (no power or cords connected to drive). Plug power in and turn on. After it is on, push the reset button. Turn drive off. Turn drive to auto. Attach cable (eSata in my case) and attach to MBP. My MBP will now see the drive. I am doing a stripped RAID.

 

[smiles78]

When I switch out drives I have to push the reset button on the back of my POS LaCie. This works with my MBP. First, switch the hard drives out (no power or cords connected to drive). Plug power in and turn on. After it is on, push the reset button. Turn drive off. Turn drive to auto. Attach cable (eSata in my case) and attach to MBP. My MBP will now see the drive. I am doing a stripped RAID.

did you also go to bigger capacity when you did that?
and if, to which?

I think I did exactly what you said.

thanks,

alex

 

[Digital Skunk]

Obviously the chipsets aren't designed for bigger capacities than out of the the box.

If this is true than this sucks. Don't have the funds for it now, but was hoping to double capacity on my 2Big.

 

[smiles78]

If this is true than this sucks. Don't have the funds for it now, but was hoping to double capacity on my 2Big.

I actually got a phone number of LaCie from the retailer here in Berlin.
I called them and the explained that the older "2BIG dual" (which I have)
for sure doesn't handle the capacity.
For the newer 2BIG quadra he wasn't sure - they advice against it (of course) since they run tests on certain drive types on which the chipsets will work with.
Also they said that they changed the chipset on the newer quadra.

If you have the older dual- dont waste your time! (I already have)

 

[Digital Skunk]

I actually got a phone number of LaCie from the retailer here in Berlin.
I called them and the explained that the older "2BIG dual" (which I have)
for sure doesn't handle the capacity.
For the newer 2BIG quadra he wasn't sure - they advice against it (of course) since they run tests on certain drive types on which the chipsets will work with.
Also they said that they changed the chipset on the newer quadra.

If you have the older dual- dont waste your time! (I already have)

Good to know.

I know now that I will just save my cash for now and head over to a custom tower or the 4big.

 

[badboomer73]

LaCie is for suckers

crack open a LaCie and inside you will find a crappy 3rd rate hard drive that they didn't make. I know this from experience.

They are over priced. All you have to do is grab yourself a western digital or even better a seagate and a good case. External drives are simple to put together and you'll have the top of the line hard drive for about 65% the price of a crap box LaCie.