external Hard Drive "crashed"; still use it or demand replacement from LaCie?

[redsteven]

Not sure if I'm using the right terminology, since maybe it wasn't a "crash", but here's what happened.

I got a LaCie Rikiki Go 1 TB external USB drive a little over a month ago. All was well until yesterday. Yesterday morning everything was fine. Ejected it from the Finder and then unplugged it, and went to school.
When I got back home I plugged it back into my macbook pro... and was met with a wonderful message:

The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer

So I tried the other USB port... no luck.
Tried a different cable... no luck
Tried a different macbook pro (my girlfriend's)... no luck.


In disk utility, the "hardware" line was visible, "1 TB TOSHIBA MK1059GSM Media", but there were no lines under that for partitions. I erased the drive and zero'd it out (I figure that should be an adequate test of writing errors, right?)

Should I repartition it and go back to using this drive for backups?

Or should I contact LaCie and ask them to replace it because I don't trust it to keep my data safe.


I'm hoping somebody else out there with a better understanding of spontaneous hard drive failures could explain exactly what kind of event could cause a failure like that to happen... the drive was never exposed to shock or trauma or EM radiation or magnets or anything.... it lives a very sedentary life sitting on my desk at home.

 

[redsteven]

For anyone who come's upon this thread in the future, here's the CORRECT advice.

DON'T trust the drive.


It "crashed" again 3 days later (this afternoon). Suddenly it can't be read anymore, and has to be initialized. It's going back to LaCie

 

[VPrime]

How old is the drive? All hard drive will just die, they wont last for ever.. Too many moving parts.

 

[redsteven]

I got a LaCie Rikiki Go 1 TB external USB drive a little over a month ago.

^^^ about 5 weeks

 

[VPrime]

Ah, then it is probably faulty. Contact them for a replacement.

 

[hexonxonx]

And remember, LaCie doesn't make drives. They get drives from the major drive manufacturers such as Seagate.

I have a Lacie two big tripple drive that still works today. It originally came with two Seagate drives which died about two years later. I replaced them with Western Digital drives and I'm still using them today.

 

[redsteven]

the one in my enclosure is a Toshiba