LaCie d2 120GB drive -- a good buy?

[jackc]

Amazon.com has it for $159.99, what do you guys think?

A couple of questions (I don't know anything about hard drives):

It says it has "the luxury of no terminator and no device ID"? Heh?

Also, what are the pros/cons of having an external power supply? A couple of the reviews complained about problems when putting the computer to sleep, and about noise. It's not necessary to keep the drive on all the time, is it?

 

[JamesDPS]

I'd say it's an okay buy but not great. You don't want to be spending much more than $1 per gig. I recently bought this and although it might be more than you're looking for, you'll find a 160GB on ebuyer for not much more than you're looking at on Amazon.

Anyway also look at the buffer size -- I'm not sure what the 120 has but you want an 8mb buffer not a 2mb, makes a difference to speed. The firewire800 is a nice addition to the model I bought, but apparently the buffer matters more...

 

[Sparky's]

I'm finding Maxtor and LaCie to be the front runners in HDs. just remember thoguh that there are issues involved with drives over 128gb (as I've seen on several threads so far) so anything over 128 is going to have to be partitioned from what I've been reading.

 

[MacUser1]

LaCie

i purchased a LaCie d2 250GB hard drive this year and have had great success. it has a 8MB buffer, 7200 RPM and is more than reliable. the quality of the LaCie d2 hard drives are very impressive. the d2 250 GB has Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0. i didn't think i would need these many inputs, but in the dorms and transferring files from different computers, the multiple inputs are great. so you may want to condsider moving up to a d2 that has those inputs.

 

[stoid]

I'm finding Maxtor and LaCie to be the front runners in HDs. just remember thoguh that there are issues involved with drives over 128gb (as I've seen on several threads so far) so anything over 128 is going to have to be partitioned from what I've been reading.

The problem is that the older ATA buses could only address a certain amount of space, and so any additional space couldn't be addressed by the system.

 

[Sparky's]

Not beeing a tech engineer, I'm taking that as a verification of my info?

 

[musicpyrite]

I'd say it's an okay buy but not great. You don't want to be spending much more than $1 per gig. I recently bought this and although it might be more than you're looking for, you'll find a 160GB on ebuyer for not much more than you're looking at on Amazon.

Anyway also look at the buffer size -- I'm not sure what the 120 has but you want an 8mb buffer not a 2mb, makes a difference to speed. The firewire800 is a nice addition to the model I bought, but apparently the buffer matters more...

Your link doesn't work.

 

[Ambrose Chapel]

i got the LaCie D2 160 GB drive for $165 at buy.com last month. very happy with it so far.

 

[JamesDPS]

Your link doesn't work.

Nuts. Sorry about that --- just go to ebuyer.com and look for the 250GB d2. It was about $270 shipped, I think. (Same drive MacUser1 described earlier). Or just look around on pricegrabber.com or somewhere -- anyways I love the LaCie, pretty awesome drive.

 

[Bhennies]

depends on what you're doing. If you are doing very hard core audio or video work , I wouldn't get the Lacie. I would invest in something nicer like a Glyph firewire drive. The Lacie's are OK, but not high end. I had a Lacie CD burner and it broke (warranty replaced it but still- i didn't have it for 2 weeks). I now have a Que M3 100 GB and it sucks. I am going to buy a Glyph very soon. They are quiet (made for Pro audio) and they have an Oxford 911 transfer chip- very helpful as I have drive errors occasionally with the Que. For low end or mid level work, the Lacie should be fine.

 

[JFreak]

lacie uses hitachi hard drives in the d2 units, so it's a good buy. lacie case is also fanless, so it's quiet. and if anybody cares, d2 case is rack-mountable.

buy 120 or 160 gig version if you get it dirt cheap, but if you pay the list price i'd suggest buying such a model that there's the 8mb cache.

--

there's one thing about lacie d2 case (and probably all other brand cases too) that is good to know: its firewire connectors are fragile. the cannot take much physical strain, so it's quite easy to break it. so handle the plugs with care, and as soon as you have any kind of trouble with firewire connectors, you have to back up and send it in for warranty exchange. once all the connectors break, you have to decide which is more important to you - the data in it or the warranty value in cash - because lacie will not make backup for you and if you want to take the drive out and do it yourself, the warranty is naturally void. i tell you this because my friend had bad experience and decided to void the warranty 'cause the data inside was so important. the d2 case just seems so rugged that it could take any kind of abuse, but the firewire connectors seem to be weaker than it looks.

 

[Bhennies]

there's one thing about lacie d2 case (and probably all other brand cases too) that is good to know: its firewire connectors are fragile. the cannot take much physical strain, so it's quite easy to break it. so handle the plugs with care, and as soon as you have any kind of trouble with firewire connectors, you have to back up and send it in for warranty exchange. once all the connectors break, you have to decide which is more important to you - the data in it or the warranty value in cash - because lacie will not make backup for you and if you want to take the drive out and do it yourself, the warranty is naturally void. i tell you this because my friend had bad experience and decided to void the warranty 'cause the data inside was so important. the d2 case just seems so rugged that it could take any kind of abuse, but the firewire connectors seem to be weaker than it looks.

The Lacie, as JFreak points out...will do the trick, but be careful with it- it personally makes me very nervous to know that my back up drive is semi-fragile. Glyph for example, has a 48 hour turnaround on broken drives and a 3 year warranty (versus 1 year for Lacie). Plus they do data recovery for you for free. They are also stainless steel construction with much higher quality components. I guess these are little perks you pay for...but after all the computer trouble I've had with cheap products...I always spend more up front- cause you'll end up spending it down the road anyway. Hence, why I'm buying a Glyph myself after just buying a 100 gig Que only 2 years ago (POS). The 120 gig Glyph will cost you about twice what a Lacie will, but I guarantee it will last at least twice as long. My 2 cents!

p.s. I swear to god I'm not a glyph rep. I just think they're the best I've come across. By the way- they make a firewire 800 for HD video as well.