LaCie External HDDs

[BreakGuy]

Does anyone have any experience with LaCie external HDDs? Things like reliability, noise, comparison to other brands (WD, Seagate etc).

I'm looking at getting an external HDD for my Time Machine back ups for an iMac and MBP (should have done this a while ago) and would like some advice.

 

[miles01110]

LaCie does not make hard drives, they make enclosures and stick whatever they can get the cheapest inside them. All platter-based hard drives are the same; buy the one with the best warranty that fits your budget and size requirements.

 

[maflynn]

I've owned a LaCie external drive and found it to be solid enough. I prefer getting my External drives from OWC Probably better priced and dealing with OWC's support has always been top notch

 

[FredTheDeadHead]

The place that I work at has bought a lot of external drives of various brands. While not a huge problem, we have noticed that LaCie externals do seem to have a problem with their power supplies failing more than average. Sometimes we can just plug another power cord in and go, but sometimes not, and we had one LaCie RAID box that lost its data when its power failed. That one was the owners backup, and had some irreplaceable data.

For personal purchases, I would go with Other World, or buy a MacAlly case and get a HD with a good warranty.

 

[mus0r]

LaCie does not make hard drives, they make enclosures and stick whatever they can get the cheapest inside them. All platter-based hard drives are the same; buy the one with the best warranty that fits your budget and size requirements.

Disagree. I have, for the last 10+ years, had the worst experiences with Seagate. I will not buy them or recommend them to anyone. And a great warranty does not save you from the hassle of having a drive fail in the first place.

To the OP- it is true that LaCie does not make the drives in their boxes. I will say, however, that their enclosures are nice, and typically pretty reliable. Their prices aren't always stellar, though.

 

[weslsew]

I would not recommend them. I had one of their raid 0 enclosures that had the power supply fail in less than a year. Their support was good though, I called them up and they shipped me a new one fairly quickly. However, after a few more months the controller failed, and of course all my data was gone. Called them up again and they had me send the drive in, and after a few weeks sent me a new single drive enclosure (i guess they quit making the raid 0 because they were unreliable).

I agree with Fred, the MacAlly cases are beautiful, I've got two, one with a WD and one with a Hitachi drive and they are both very fast (eSATA) and reliable. And I think they'll cost you just over $100 for case + 1tb drive from amazon.

 

[kastorff]

While not a huge problem, we have noticed that LaCie externals do seem to have a problem with their power supplies failing more than average.

This is my experience as well. Build quality is typically excellent, but they ship power supplies that are too close to the minimum spec. As the power supply ages, it fails to provide the power to spin the drive up from rest. The drives are fine. To LaCie's credit, on more than one occasion, they've provided an out of warranty power supply replacement at no cost.

 

[yellowbunny]

All the LaCie drives I've owned have had problems, mostly due to the poor build quality on inputs (USB/power etc). I always buy drives with the longest warranties now (but not LaCie).

 

[DeepIn2U]

Does anyone have any experience with LaCie external HDDs? Things like reliability, noise, comparison to other brands (WD, Seagate etc).

I'm looking at getting an external HDD for my Time Machine back ups for an iMac and MBP (should have done this a while ago) and would like some advice.

Considering your Mac I think the LaCie little big disk using thunderbolt will be good.

 

[Battlefield Fan]

My Lacie 2Big is crap. Every once in awhile the front status light starts blinking red and blue. After contacting support they told me to backup my data (because i've got a spare 4TB hard drive laying around) and reformat my RAID.

I did and a month later the red status light comes back around.

I'm convinced that with lacie you pay for the designers, neil politin etc, rather than the quality.

 

[miles01110]

Disagree. I have, for the last 10+ years, had the worst experiences with Seagate. I will not buy them or recommend them to anyone.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. No hard drive brand is better than any other, it's a simple fact.

And a great warranty does not save you from the hassle of having a drive fail in the first place.

No warranty saves you from the hassle of having a drive fail. It helps you get new hardware ASAP. I don't see how this is at all relevant.

 

[wordsworth]

I used a LaCie Porsche drive with my G3 iMac for several years. To be honest, I was surprised that the iMac's own hard drive continued to perform like a trouper despite the computer being a real workhorse for a good six or seven years. The LaCie external performed fine too, though I would sometimes have difficulty getting it to 'mount' on my iMac's desktop.

A friend had several external LaCie d2 drives and a couple of them failed.

With my current MacBook I looked at various web feedback, at reviews, and then went for an Iomega portable drive to plug into it, because the price was good, the storage was sufficient for my modest needs, it had a USB 2 and Firewire 400/800 options, and there was sufficient positive feedback to reassure me. So far so good!

I do like LaCie's SilverKeeper software. I've grown used to it and I now use it (a newer version) with my Iomega drive. I believe you can download it for free.

Good luck with your purchase.