Experiences with Lacie and iomega external drives?

[Mr.Bullitt]

Hi guys!


I am looking for an external drive with FireWire 800 and the offerings from Lacie and iomega look very temping.

But - what are your experiences with performance, noise and reliability?

What hard drives do they use internally? Seagate? Samsung? ?


I like the alu designs, they should look good with both my MBP and a possible iMac coming in 2010.

I do not know how good eSata is on Mac, but I for sure want a drive with FW800.

There are also these OWC drives/boxes - but as I am in Denmark, I will have to pay some customs fees and more to import them. Lacies are easy to get here, while iomega are more illusive.

But the main priorities is design, low or no noise and reliability.

Right now a Lacie with Raid-1 is on the top of my list.

I assume that e.g. if I buy one with 2 mirrored 1TB drives, and if one fails - or I wish to upgrade it - I can start out by replacing 1 drive with e.g. a 2 TB, and it should still function as a 1 TB mirror, and then later add the 2nd 2TB drive for a full 2 TB mirror - is this correct???

Any recommendations??

 

[thegoldenmackid]

Well, here's some thoughts about LaCie:
LaCie: Note: there is an entire thread dedicated to LaCie, I have summed up support from users below, but simply a tally
jrotunda85 & Kronie (d2 Quadra 1 TB); RedTomato, gatepc & eVolcre, Cousin Dirk {although eVolcre owns the one with eSata and Firewire 400}(Hard Disk, Design by Neil Poulton 1 TB); iGary (LaCie Rugged); Gymnut (F.A. Porsche, out of production); VanMac (BigDiskExtreme, out of production); Digital Skunk (2Big Triple, out of production)
Users expressing general support: cmcbridejr, dpaanlka, LethalWolfe, mpsrig, UltraNeo*, iPhoneNYC, chocolate632, Hellhammer, romanaz
Users not so happy with LaCie: surfmadison (not a big fan), accacc57, dave12345 (Little Disk), jaysmith, Jerkfish, auero, mperkins37, dfs & jessica.
cluthz has mixed reactions regarding the (d2 and Neil Poulton)

My Iomega just failed. Also of note, Iomega's higher-end drives feature 8MB caches, that doesn't help the speed.

 

[mscriv]

I have a LaCie 250gb external that has been running strong for almost 4 years now. There have been no problems with it and I'd highly recommend them. As far as noise goes, well there's a slight hard drive hum, but I don't really notice it.

 

[miles01110]

What hard drives do they use internally? Seagate? Samsung? ?

They use whatever they can get the cheapest. I've owned two LaCie drives- one had a Maxtor drive (which failed within months, unsurprisingly), the other had a Samsung or Fujitsu which lasted a couple years.